10 Even More Perfect 1980s Rock Albums With No Bad Songs

3. U2 - The Joshua Tree

With 1987's The Joshua Tree, U2 took all of the promise of their four previous albums and refined it into one of the greatest albums of the decade.

This is an album that took the flawed high points of the group's career to date, but smoothed out the problematic edges to produce a sound that felt huge.

Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. hold the entire album together with their tight, punchy respective bass and drums, which in turns allows Bono the opportunity to be, well, Bono, and the Edge to often steal the show with the best guitar work he'd produced by then.

Spotlighting songs like With or Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Where the Streets Have No Name, and One Tree Hill, it's fair to say The Joshua Tree saw U2 finally strike that perfect balance between quality of depth, critical success, and mainstream stadium rock without sounding utterly w*nky.

Of course, the refinement and awareness of The Joshua Tree has long since been replaced by overindulgence and monotony across the past 20 years or more by a band who have fallen from provocative, biting lyrics to vanilla, generic dross.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.