Flicker in the Static: U2's "Achtung Baby" and the Search for Meaning in a Wired World

I had a weird hankering to hear "Zoo TV". I wanted to latch onto that beautiful early-’90s U2-meets-Rolling Stones-adulating groove. However, I found myself transfixed by Achtung Baby, and couldn’t stop listening to it for the duration of the day.

Is it an album for the fall, or is it a record best consumed during the summer months? For our purposes here, I’ll choose the latter. While autumn is the reigning champ of spookiness when it comes to seasons, there’s something a little intimidating about the beginning of summer: the aggressive regrowth of vegetation, the first hints of oppressive heat, the way green trees and shrubs seem to stare at you after the sun has gone down—sort of looking into your soul and asking if you wanna fight. The plants, the flies, the mosquitoes—they take over. Nature is in control, not you. Whaddya gonna doaboutit?

But the album brought me back to a time when our eyes weren’t perpetually fixed on the device in the palm of our hands. No—in those days, our heads might as well have been surgically attached to the inside of a CRT television, broadcasting directly to our brains in -full technicolor - all the advertisements, the marketing, propaganda; the future of our compulsion to stay connected to an all-consuming need for entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. And what did it mean? What does it mean now?

Well, in U2’s case, after revisiting the album today, there’s faith, there’s spirituality—a belief that all of these forces exist, and that we can’t avoid them. If we guide each other, and help one another along, we can survive—and maybe even find meaning—within the meaninglessness of a consumer-dominated society.

And it wasn’t just an American experience. If Bono and the boys had a particular flavor, it was bringing this commercial alienation to us through a European point of view. And in doing that, they created something just a little bit darker, a little more austere—music and themes that searched for meaning, but knew very well that in this life, and on this planet, we really might not find it. But you have to look. We dig through the roots of late-night conversations, rummaging through emotional debris for anything that resembles truth - our individual truths - no matter how bleak or futile it may seem. It’s humanity. We pesky humans can’t get away from it.

And there’s a palpable sense of the Catholic on the album as well—both in the universal meaning and in the religious one. It’s the basics: at its core, Achtung Baby explores the battle between good and evil, the mystery, and that ever-present whiff of temptation coupled with the myriad ways we grapple with it. It’s nothing new, but the way Achtung Baby juxtaposes it against the media machine of the 1980s and ’90s? It’s fascinating to see— like watching a test pattern on a dead TV channel—an eerie flicker in the dark of an unknown hotel room, daring you to find something sacred amid the static. Can you see it? Bono can. Just squint; if that doesn’t work, squint some more.

Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno tapped into something significant when they united with U2. They created a pastiche of late-’80s and early-’90s technology: it was forward-thinking, fresh, hot—and, again, global. While the themes were deeply human, the sound could be wonderfully alien. And it worked! That tension grabbed listeners’ attention. The big box office responded. But the themes? They stuck because they spoke to something real. And Anton Corbijn’s hyperrealistic photography only helped cement a product that was visually, musically, and technologically outstanding.

In the end, Achtung Baby remains a strange and vital artifact, not just of its time, but of what it means to be alive in an era when connection can be disconnection, where longing and overload all bleed together. It’s not nostalgia; it’s a warning (I mean, Achtung means, "watch out!" right?) and an invitation, maybe it’s a prayer. The flicker in the static is still there. All you have to do is tune in. And keep squinting; you’ll find it in the there somewhere.