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With 'Horizon,' U2 maintain that the album is a complete art form

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Over the years, people have lost interest in the album format. Because of iTunes and various other digital music services, ordering up a current hit song or two and ignoring the filler tracks on a record has become standard practice.

It's almost as if finger-touch technology has brought the future back to the past and we're in the pre-Beatles era, where singles - from Elvis to Buddy Holly to Frankie Avalon - ruled the day and albums were pumped out as novelties, quick cash-in merch.

The album as an art form? That doesn't happen anymore, right?

Throughout their career, U2 never gave up on the long-player as art - and, for a time, neither did their audience. Records such as War, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby were revered as complete works, with each song viewed as inseparable from the other. But now it seems as if listeners have lost hope, as if those albums are now relics and nothing can possibly be as good as it was then.

The rough reinvention

Falling back in love with their original sound, U2 discovered the band they were meant to be

From the high of Achtung Baby, U2 were in for a rough ride through much of the '90s. Reinvention of their traditional sound - discarding it altogether, really - quickly led them into a cul-de-sac.

They stumbled hard on the tentative, fumbling, intentionally ironic Pop and the tour that followed - the first time in years they failed to pack venues - but corruption at that point in their career seemed almost inevitable, and hence something we could deal with, as long as they got back to serious, heartfelt business, which they did on All That You Can't Leave Behind.

Flirting with their original sound, dancing with it, embracing it and finally falling back in love with it in a way audiences always hoped they would - much of it based on the shoulders of The Edge and his revolutionary and much-copied use of echo-driven note patterns - they discovered the band they always were and were meant to be.

Since then, they haven't lost the plot.