What is your Joshua moment?

By Steven Hyden | November 21, 2007 | 3:39pm

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Here at The A.V. Club there's a policy against writing in the first person in reviews. So, instead of writing something like "This record is great because it reminds me of getting drunk and watching The Golden Girls"—which would mean nothing to anybody other than me and possibly Rue McClanahan—you have to write something like: "This record is great because the lyrics are insightful and the guitar solos are incendiary." (Obviously the latter is a superior piece of music criticism.) It's a good policy I almost never have a problem with, except when I'm writing about the album that changed my life. Which is exactly what happened this week when I reviewed the 20th anniversary edition of U2's The Joshua Tree.

Reviewing a record like The Joshua Tree seems as meaningful as re-issuing a record like The Joshua Tree. It's one of those records you assume everybody already owns or at least has heard 100 times, but obviously that's not the case: There's always a new generation coming up, as well as plenty of fans who missed out the first time around. So, U2 gets to sell its most successful album once again, and I get to tell people how great it is. But there's no way a 250-word review could sum up my personal relationship with The Joshua Tree. U2 was my favorite band growing up, and the only album I've played more in my life than The Joshua Tree is Achtung Baby, which is (probably) a better record but not nearly as important in my personal history. The Joshua Tree basically was the single record that made me a music fan, and since listening to and thinking about music has come to dominate both my leisure and work time, discovering it clearly was a defining moment of my life.

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Listening to The Joshua Tree today I can understand why people hated U2 in 1987 (and 2007): Bono really was a melodramatic megalomaniac who wrote bad lyrics, and his band desperately wanted to be the biggest, best, and most important band in the world. Taken together, it's an instant recipe for Obnoxious Casserole. As a target of mockery, U2 is easy and probably deserving. But once the dramatic, church organ-synth line rises like early morning mist at the beginning of "Where The Streets Have No Name," none of that seems to matter. I've been playing The Joshua Tree for about 18 years–60 percent of my life–and I still love it because it still moves the hell out of me. I don't know if that makes it a masterpiece–because there are plenty of people who feel differently–but it's sure as hell a masterpiece to me. This record is profoundly personal, it belongs to me, and it always will, even if I never play it again.

I've always been amazed by how art can strike certain people so deeply while leaving others cold. (Can't you see how great this is! Can't you see how much it sucks!) What's more amazing is I know that there's new stuff out there that I haven't discovered yet, just waiting to connect with me. If you're a fan, this is what drives you: the thrill of discovery, and the idea that the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual nourishment you get from a record, movie, book, or anything else you love can be found again and again (and even again once more). But there always has to be a first time, a lightening bolt in your brain that tells you, "This is it. This is what it feels like to feel, to connect, to be changed forever. You won't look at life the same way again, and you don't want to because things now are better than they used to be." In other words, a Joshua moment.

What was it about The Joshua Tree to hit me just the right way as a 12-year-old? I don't know. Timing had a lot to do with it, I'm sure. At that age a lot of records could have come along and been "the one." (A lot of others did shortly afterward: Nevermind, Led Zeppelin IV, Who's Next, The Clash, Appetite For Destruction, Automatic For The People, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols (which I owned only briefly because "Bodies" scared me, though I later bought it back), Abbey Road.) When I bought a cassette copy of The Joshua Tree around 1990 or so, I was a hardcore Top 40 radio junkie. My favorites at the time, unapologetically, were Paula Abdul, Janet Jackson (Rhythm Nation 1814 was a particular favorite), Huey Lewis And The News, Fine Young Cannibals, and, at No. 1, Milli Vanilli. U2 to me was another pop band, and I liked The Joshua Tree because the album's three hit singles–"Streets," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and "With Or Without You"–were the first three songs on the tape, which meant I didn't have to fast-forward through the songs I didn't know to hear them. When Larry Mullen started in on the drum intro to "Bullet The Blue Sky," that was my cue to rewind back to the beginning of the tape.

Primetime music-playing for me was when I took my daily bike-ride after dinner. Forever Your Girl and Girl, You Know It's True were my go-to bike-riding tapes, but one day I decided to go with something different and reached for that Joshua Tree tape I didn't play all that much. I don't think the tape left my Walkman for the rest of the summer. Listening to The Joshua Tree on my bike as the sun went down in my neighborhood soon became my favorite part of the day. I already liked music, but this was different: The Joshua Tree gave me a funny feeling in my chest. It made me feel sad but also strangely elated. It made me think about life outside the regular routine of my small Midwestern town. It made me curious about what else was out there. I couldn't believe I didn't already know that something this amazing existed. What other awesome stuff was out there waiting to be uncovered? Almost 20 years later, I'm still finding out.

So, The Joshua Tree made me the crazy music obsessive I am today. What did it for you? Do you have a singular Joshua moment: a song, a record, or a show that clicked with you so deeply that you're still chasing that feeling today?