Today, Jezebel got me thinking. They ask, “What was the album that made you love music?” So, not the first album you ever bought with your own money (can’t remember but I have vague recollections of early visits to Specs at the local strip mall) or the first album you ever received (the Christmas morning I woke up to the triple glory of Madonna’s True Blue, Whitney Houston’s debut and Janet Jackson’s Control was a special one). But…the first album that made you love music?
I came up with U2’s The Joshua Tree.
It was released in 1987 but I probably didn’t own it until 1989 or so. I distinctly remember hearing With or Without You on my ride to school in the morning and thinking it was pure beauty. It may have stood out so distinctly because I was very into hair bands in those days and this was, well, different from Talk Dirty to Me. Also, it was so different from every other girl’s obsession at the time in my Catholic school, the New Kids On the Block, who I proudly despised. I guess I thought it was original before I knew that I valued originality.
I bought the tape and every U2 album since then. Strangely, I’ve only seen them once in concert — during their Elevation tour at Madison Square Garden. I went by myself and it was probably one of the most moving musical experiences of my life. Two months after September 11th, 2001, I couldn’t have asked for a better band to spend a night with.
Even stranger, this exercise made me realize that I don’t currently own a copy of The Joshua Tree. Somehow, in the move from tape, to CD, to digital it got lost in the mix. Logging onto iTunes now…
Posted by: Mariela
Matterful 
We’re aligned, Mariela. I specifically remember discovering ‘The Joshua Tree’ and ‘Rattle and Hum’ because my 7th grade crush Chris was a huge U2 fan. He even let me borrow his cassette tapes which I listened to in a back bedroom of my step-grandparents house during a routine Sunday football afternoon. I fell in love with U2; Chris fell by the wayside.