The B-Sides Make it Even Better

Most bands if they are at all successful for 3 or 4 albums eventually release a "greatest hits" set. Some of those same bands take all the b-sides and rarities and release a cd of those. U2 decided to do something a bit different. They released a greatest hits set spanning the first half of their career, 1980-1990, but then made up so many limited edition 2 CD sets that also included the B-sides cd mentioned above. And as if getting U2's best songs all on one CD isn't enough, the B-sides cd has more than a few hidden gems.
First the greatest hits. Well, they're all here. Well, up to and including Rattle and Hum that is. My personal favorite, "Pride (in the name of love)" starts it off. There's just something about this song, I can't pinpoint it, yes it's one of the more poppy songs they've done, I just love it. I think it's the emotion in Bono's voice, but I could be wrong.
As much as I love "Pride", I can't stand New Year's Day just as much. The lyrics are fine, the music is fine, and it sounds great live, but the studio version just grates on me for some strange reason.
From there you get 2 of the best songs ever written by any band, With or Without You and I Still Haven't Found...... I've covered both these songs extensively in my Joshua Tree review, as well as Where the Streets Have no Name, so I will make no further mention of those 3 songs here.
Just about every song here is a classic in it's own right. Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bad, I Will Follow, Unforgettable Fire, When Love Comes to Town, All I Want is You, the list goes on and on. Two of my favorites from Rattle and Hum are here as well, the absolutely wonderfully anthemic "Angel of Harlem" with killer horns, and the rocking Desire. They also took one of the b sides, "Sweetest Thing," and made a new mix of it and released that as a single for this record. However, this is just way too poppy sounding for my liking, even though the lyrics are pretty good for what's a love song. The only downside is that there is no "Bullet the Blue Sky" on here, and it should've been in my opinion.
Speaking of the b-sides, lol, well I told you guys I was detailed.
Anyways, the b-sides has some good songs on it. There's the rather cool"The Three Sunrises." It's a basic rock song, but Edge has some killer riffs on it.
There's also a song called "Luminous Times." This song is slowly but surely growing on me, and you can feel the power in it.
Just so as not to bore people to death, I'll cut this short. The other favorite b-sides of mine are "Silver and Gold," "Endless Deep," and "Trash, Trampoline, and the Party Girl." Each is a good song in their own ways, and I'm sure you'll enjoy them as much as I do. The rest of the b-sides are ok, but nothing great, there isn't another "With or Without You" in there, that's for sure. I highly recommend trying to find this version. It's really only like two or three dollars more and it's worth it for some of these songs. If you can't find the 2 disc version, or just want the 1 disc, I highly recommend just getting the one disc, it may just be the best greatest hits collection ever released.
And one other thing, it's quite obvious from the title that there will be another collection released, most likely titled The Best of 1990-2000, and will include Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop. I hope they do another two disk set.