U2 - "Bersantai Honey"

 

It wasn't until recently that I discovered there were so many outtakes from U2's Achtung Baby -- which happens to be my favorite album by the band. Some of the extra tunes ended up being reworked into songs for the follow-up Zooropa or released elsewhere as B-sides, etc. 

I thought it might be interesting to take all the outtakes and assemble them into a theoretical follow-up to Achtung Baby instead or perhaps in addition to Zooropa.

1. Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk - Korova 1

2. Blow Your House Down

3. Salomé

4. Everybody Loves a Winner

5. Oh Berlin

6. Lady with the Spinning Head (UV1)

7. Down All the Days

8. Near the Island

9. Where Did It All Go Wrong?

10. Heaven and Hell

I kicked off the album with the mostly instrumental "Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk - Korova 1," which was originally released as a B-side of "The Fly" single. Both "Salomé" and "Where Did It All Go Wrong" were B-sides to the "Even Better than the Real Thing" single. The remaining tracks went unreleased until 2011.

The combined 10 tracks for this album come to just over 42 minutes, a very respectable length, even in the CD era. The result is an album that doesn't sound like a bunch of leftovers, but rather a complete album. I consider Achtung Baby U2's high point, and I think the quality of the songs left off the album just goes to show that U2 was on a roll during these sessions.

There were even more tracks recorded that I didn't use, but that's because they were cover tunes and I wanted this album to be made up of all originals.

When it came time to create the album's cover, I chose some random photos that reflected some of the song titles—some more obvious than others—and looked similar to the cover for Achtung Baby. I again took inspiration from Achtung Baby for the album's title. "Achtung" is German for "danger." "Bersantai" is Indonesian for "relax."

All tracks can be found on the "Super Deluxe" and "Uber Deluxe" versions of Achtung Baby.

Here's a YouTube Playlist of the album.