U2 - The Best of 1980-1990 & B-Sides (Island) You have to agree with the hyperbole: this is going to be one of the best-selling records of the year.
This best-of compilation is brimming with U2's most popular adrenalin-filled anthems, peppered with chest-beating songs with 'meaningful' messages that make buyers think they are acquiring a social conscience in addition to the music.
Popularity equates not piquancy, however, and even millions of people can be wrong: U2 of the 1980s shifted millions - in terms of record units, royalties and stadium seats - because they supplied the masses with the most pompous rock 'n' roll of the decade.
The crimes of pomposity lived on in the incarnations of Bono: in how he played messiah, preaching to the masses (Live Aid), walking through deserts (The Joshua Tree of 1987), and ended up being very egocentric (the self-indulgent mess of 1988's Rattle And Hum).
The way the hits are organised unchronologically inadvertently saves the compilation; or else listeners would experience for themselves how the quartet spiralled downwards musically during their first decade.
The best moments of the double-disc release are on the B-sides collection, on tracks that Bono swapped his idea of fun - the holier-than-thou postures - for ours.