Reception
| The Unforgettable Fire | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| The Austin Chronicle | |
| BBC Music | Favourable |
| Robert Christgau | B+ |
| CCM Magazine | Favourable |
| Hot Press | 12/12 |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Sputnikmusic | |
| The Unforgettable Fire | |
|---|---|
| Deluxe Edition | |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Pitchfork Media | 9.3/10 |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | |
Bill Graham of Hot Press wrote in 1996 that The Unforgettable Fire was U2's most pivotal album and that it was "their coming of age that saved their lives as a creative unit." Niall Stokes, also of Hot Press said that "one or two tracks were undercooked" due to the deadline crush but that it was U2's "first album with a cohesive sound" on which "U2 were reborn". Rolling Stone magazine gave the album a score of 3/5 stars, compared to the 4/5 stars given to the two previous albums, Under a Blood Red Sky and War. In the review, Kurt Loder said that "with The Unforgettable Fire, U2 flickers and nearly fades, its fire banked by a misconceived production strategy and occasional interludes of soggy, songless self-indulgence. This is not a 'bad' album, but neither is it the irrefutable beauty the band's fans anticipated."
Tony Fletcher of Jamming! said it was not "...an album full of hits. a forceful collection of atmospheric ideas and themes, forgettable at first but strangely haunting and soon firmly implanted." and that Eno's production has removed some of the "heavy metal" from U2 and replaced "emotion the driving force".
Read more about this topic: The Unforgettable Fire
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)