The Best of 1980 - 1990 (1998)
1. Pride (In the Name of Love) 2. New Year's Day 3. With or Without You 4. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 5. Sunday Bloody Sunday 6. Bad 7. Where The Streets Have No Name 8. I Will Follow 9. The Unforgettable Fire 10.Sweetest Thing 11.Desire 12.When Love Comes To Town 13.Angel of Harlem 14.All I Want is You
For whatever reason, 'greatest hits' packages don't really work that well for this band. It's not that they didn't have hits, they had plenty. And it's not that this album is misrepresented - basically everything that should be here from the band's first ten years is here. It might be the fact that, well, just about everything they did was top notch - regardless of whether or not it was a hit or not, so it almost seems fair not to make such a compilation such as this one. Or, it could be the fact that band was known to radically change its styles from record to record - especially during the last six years of the decade (and even more so in the 90s). This makes this whole album seem a bit uneven.
Then, for whatever reason, the four tracks from the last release, Rattle and Hum are all crammed at the end here. It's almost as if it's an afterthought. It just seems a bit weird since the rest of the record isn't presented chronologically. There's one 'non album' track here, The Sweetest Thing. I'm not sure if it was ever a hit, nor if it was ever even released as a single, so its inclusion here seems a bit suspect. Still, it's a great song. But, as already mentioned, so was just about everything else they had every put out. Seriously, it really is worth it just to buy all of their albums instead of a condensed package.
Note: There's also a double CD version of this release with "B-sides". I guess it might be worth it.