Achtung Baby

The sessions began at Hansa in Berlin in October 1990, around the time of German reunification, with arguments over direction. One was the breakthrough, and the work moved to Dublin. Flood engineered and mixed, and the final mixing took place at Windmill Lane.

Robbie Adams, who engineered, told Sound On Sound that Berlin lasted only about two months. After that came roughly six months at Elsinore, a rented house in Dalkey nicknamed Dog Town, with the Edge's home studio as a second room, and about eleven months in all. Lanois pushed for live performance over polish. They used a Soundcraft 6000 desk with an Otari 24-track recorder running Dolby SR, later a vintage 36-channel Neve, and recorded "fatting" overdubs to a Fostex DAT machine synced to the Otari. Adams mixed Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World and Even Better Than the Real Thing.

Chart and reception

It entered at number one on the US Billboard 200 and has sold about 18 million copies. The Fly reached number one in the United Kingdom, Mysterious Ways reached 9 in the United States, and One reached 7 in the United Kingdom and 10 in the United States. At the 1993 Grammys it won Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and was nominated for Album of the Year, while Lanois and Eno were named Producer of the Year. It was shortlisted for the 1992 Mercury Prize. Reissues followed for the 20th anniversary in October 2011 and the 30th in November 2021.

Bill Wyman in Entertainment Weekly found it pristinely produced and surprisingly unpretentious, and Jon Pareles of the New York Times heard a stripped-down record defying the band's old formulas. Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune called it a magnificent search for transcendence, while Jim Greer of Spin called it an ambitious failure.

The 2011 reissue

Ryan Dombal reviewed the 2011 Super Deluxe Edition for Pitchfork and gave it 9.5. The set runs to six CDs and four DVDs and includes the documentary From the Sky Down by Davis Guggenheim. Dombal noted that Hansa had earlier hosted David Bowie and Iggy Pop and that Zoo Station is named after a Berlin train terminal, but that the sessions there fell short of their reputation. In the film Clayton called Berlin a baptism of fire, and One was mostly written in a burst of inspiration at Hansa while most of the album came together once the band went home to Dublin.