As is the case with many who know, work with, or just love the band, the deeper Interscope Geffen A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine gets into conversation about U2, the closer he gets to gushing.

Iovine-who before becoming the band's label boss produced its Under a Blood Red Sky and Rattle and Hum albums -- says that in the group's new Island collection, The Best of 1990-2000, fans have proof of four musicians doing the near impossible: retaining their band's musical, cultural, and political relevance for some 20 years while remaining as devoted as ever to each other and the art they make.

"The force of this thing," Iovine notes, "is nothing short of astounding."

Indeed. And, from a certain perspective, U2's accomplishments become even more impressive when surveying The Best of 1990-2000, as it not only shows the band retaining its relevance but also pulling off the improbable maneuver of emerging from the shadow of The Joshua Tree as a bigger and better band. Like 1998's The Best of 1980-1990, this album will be sold in two configurations -- as a two-disc set including a disc of 14 B-sides from this era (out Nov. 5), and additionally as a one-disc best-of, out Tuesday (12). In its first week of release, the two-disc set will be sold exclusively with a free DVD -- featuring an alternate "Beautiful Day" video, as well as a live clip of "Please" -- shrink-wrapped to the jewel case.

The new set begins appropriately with a track from 1991's Achtung Baby ("Even Better Than the Real Thing"), the band's first album of the '90s, and the record that Bono then proclaimed as the sound of U2 "chopping down" The Joshua Tree. And it positively was; with this album, the group marked a new beginning -- and the second chapter of its career -- by reinventing itself and experimenting with sounds and songwriting approaches, dirty, distorted guitar riffs, and ironic lyrics.

A Rebirth

Guitarist the Edge recalls the stylistic shift as the spark that reignited U2 after the grueling two years of touring with which the band ended the '80s. After the group wound down the decade, playing its final stop on its international Lovetown tour on New Year's Eve 1989, the group felt "out of ideas," he says: "That particular moment, the end of the '80s, was a difficult moment for us. We were kind of physically and mentally exhausted; we weren't sure where we wanted to go. And it just seemed like we'd run out of road. So the only thing to do, it seemed, was take a break."

Yet that break didn't last long, as Bono and the Edge became inspired while delving into much of the hip industrial and dance music of the time while preparing the music for a stage production of A Clockwork Orange. Not long after, the band, aching to move in a new direction, convened in Berlin to make Achtung Baby with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.

"We really felt for our own sort of creative survival that it was important to expand on what the band was about, musically and in terms of people's perception," the Edge says. "We were kind of looking for the freedom to be more than just the stereotype cartoons that we seemed to have become in people's eyes as a result of the big success of The Joshua Tree; you know, that was just one album, one side of the band. But it did seem to be, like, such a straitjacket of a kind."

Propelled, most notably, by the sexy rocker "Mysterious Ways" and the stunning ballad "One" -- both top 10 hits -- the album debuted in December 1991 at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, on which it spent 97 weeks en route to an eight-times platinum certification.

Open Floodgates

In addition to catapulting the band over the hump that was following the success of 1987's 10-times platinum The Joshua Tree and 1988's five-times platinum Rattle and Hum, the album flung open the floodgates of creative possibilities for the band, the Edge says. "We were reinvigorated as a band and as songwriters, and it really gave us a completely different view of what we were about and where we could take being a band."

U2 continued to explore its new freedom with 1993's double-platinum Zooropa -- represented on the new collection by "Numb," "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" and "The First Time" -- and more so on 1997's dance-leaning Pop ("Discotheque," "Staring at the Sun," "Gone").

And when U2 -- probably the most important band of the '80s -- subtly melded old and new on 2000's triple-platinum All That You Can't Leave Behind (represented here by "Beautiful Day" and "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get out Of"), it enjoyed its biggest hit since Achtung Baby and then rounded out the decade by gaining a deeper level of importance to U.S. fans as rock's unapologetic, flag-waving champion of hope, faith, and perseverance after Sept. 11, 2001.

Longtime manager Paul McGuinness says, "They love being in U2, and the reason why I think it's enjoyable for them is that they have never repeated themselves. They didn't find a formula and stick to it, they took risks, they were always affected greatly by what was going on and the rest of the rock 'n' roll culture, and they were ambitious to be good as times changed. And they still are."

Along the way, U2 has created the rarest of demographics, says Paul Kremen, head of marketing for Interscope Geffen A&M, who notes that this anthology will be supported with a TV commercial airing on everything from MTV and VH1 to ESPN, MSNBC, and Lifetime. "When you're working U2," Kremen says, "you're working a band with a history and a legacy that hit a broad swath of America -- a consumer from the age of 12-15 to 55 -- and that takes a lot of doing to try and make sure you hit as many of those people as you can."

In addition to the single and video for new song "Electrical Storm" (one of two new cuts on this album) -- shipped to modern rock, hot AC, and triple-A in late September -- The Best of 1990-2000 will be feted with a retrospective airing this month on VH1 and MTV2, as well as a prime-time CBS telecast of the band's last stop on the 2001 Elevation tour (airing Nov. 29). Expectations are surely high, as The Best of 1980-1990 -- between its two versions -- sold more than 3 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. (Worldwide sales of All That You Can't Leave Behind remain so brisk, meanwhile, that the set could wind up over the next decade eclipsing The Joshua Tree as U2's best-selling album, McGuinness notes.)

The 16-track Best of 1990-2000 also features "Miss Sarajevo," a collaboration with Luciano Pavarotti from the 1995 Passengers project, as well as "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," from that year's Batman Forever soundtrack; left off, partially to avoid weighting the collection toward one album, are "Walk On," "The Fly," Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" and "Lemon," among others. The Edge says, "It was kind of a complicated task to whittle it down to these songs, but it was also a really nice feeling to know that there was a lot of competition; it wasn't a case of having to scrape the barrel to make this collection stack up."


© Billboard, 2002.