U2’s 1991 album Achtung Baby has won Ireland’s RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Classic Irish Album.
In announcing the choice, the judging panel, made up of Irish music media and industry professionals, said “you cannot deny the album’s authenticity and significant cultural impact as one classic song after another unfolds over 55 minutes.”
They add, “To this day, it still resonates as a collection of songs that capture the spirit of change at both a personal as well as a societal level, when the Berlin wall came tumbling down, and Ireland sensed a change in the air.”
The panel also points out how the band’s Zoo TV tour “helped to reinvent the studio show,” and how U2 is doing that again with their Las Vegas residency dedicated to the album, U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere.
The RTÉ Choice Music Prize was established in 2005 to highlight the best in Irish music and “promote and showcase the health and growth of the local industry both within Ireland and overseas.”
The first-ever Classic Irish Album Award was handed out last year to Sinéad O’Connor’s 1990 release I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.
U2’s Achtung Baby, produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, went to #1 on the Billboard 200 chart and featured two top 10 hits, “One” and “Mysterious Ways.” The band is playing the album in full during their Las Vegas Sphere residency, which only has four dates left: February 23 and 24, and March 1 and 6.
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