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Way back in the far distant year of 1988, the music scene was at a climactic point as rock and pop were once again clashing to see who would reign supreme at the 1988 Grammy Awards, withU2at the center of it all.
The ’80s were a wild time for music, as technological advances in recording and distribution had seen whole genres rise and fall, as well as the beginning of the overarching legacy ofalternative rock and its innumerable subgenres.
Personally, I only have the vaguest memories of the 1988 Grammys myself, since my mom didn’t go into labor with me until about a week after the ceremony.
Yet the ‘88 Grammys may have had even more tension over theAlbum of The Year than the 67th Grammysthis past year did.
There were plenty of contenders for the award in 1988, namely Michael Jackson’s smash hitBad, Whitney Houston’s self-titled second albumWhitney, Prince’s genre-defyingSign o’ the Times, the country collaborationTriofrom Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris, and a single rock album:The Joshua Tree, the fifth studio album from acclaimed Irish rockers U2.
Despite significant buzz around all the entries, and the Grammys' several-year streak of giving Album of The Year to a pop record, the 1988 awards bucked the trend completely.
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U2’s The Joshua Tree Won Album Of The Year At The 1988 Grammy Awards
U2’s victory withThe Joshua Treewas a huge surprise, especially given its position against not just Whitney Houston, whose albumWhitneyhad seen its four singles all debut at the top of the charts, but also Michael Jackson’sBad, which saw theKing of Popdon a studded leather jacket and infuse his music with an aggression that seemed at odds with his previous releases.
YetBadfailed to net Jackson any awards, unlike just four years before, when he won eight Grammys in a clean sweep withThriller.
Called “hunuvat chi’ya” or “humwichawa” by the indigenous Cahuilla tribe, whose home is now part of Southern California, the Joshua tree, oryucca bevifolia, got its common English name in the mid-19th century, possibly from Mormon settlers.
It grows in the deserts in southern California and Arizona, and western New Mexico, within a narrow band of elevation, and continues to be at risk from climate change.
The Joshua Tree’s success at the Grammys was also rightly seen as a fluke; it would be nearly another decade until another rock album (Alanis Morrisette’sJagged Little Pillin 1996) would win Album of The Year.
U2 did snag a Grammy the following year, though, winning the 1989 ceremony’s Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal with “Desire,” the lead single off ofThe Joshua Tree’s follow-up, the ambitious live/studio hybrid albumRattle and Hum.
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The Competition Was Tough, But The Joshua Tree Deserved Its Win
While U2’s competition for Album of The Year in 1988 was legendary, the win was genuinely well-deserved.
A Grammy isn’t just a popularity contest, or a reflection of an album’s sales the Album of The Year is selected becauseit’s something that stands out as an artistic masterpiece.
In the years since,WhitneyandBadmay have outsoldThe Joshua Tree, but neither of them come close to the same degree of artistic accomplishment as U2’s album.
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WhileWhitneywas full of fantastic, still-relevant pop hits, andBadwas considered the most anticipated album in history in the months leading up to its release,The Joshua Treeis a specific, intentional artistic journey.
U2, inspired by their time spent touring America after their previous album, 1984’sThe Unforgettable Fire, wanted to createsomething that spoke of the major cognitive disconnect between the aspirational myth of the American Dream with the cruel reality of mid-80s America a flawed and broken country struggling with economic recession, rabid nationalism, and political recalcitrance.
Let me be clear BadandWhitneydeserve plenty of acclaim, even almost 40 years later, for being phenomenal releases from incredible artists.
Similarly, Prince’sSign o' the Times, although a commercial underperformer, was an equally brilliant album that saw the artist experiment with sound and genre in ways that were genuinely groundbreaking.
YetThe Joshua Treewas more than that; it was a snapshot of a gnarled tree amidst a beautifully harsh wilderness.
As Bono said in an interview with now-defunctU2fan magazinePropaganda, shortly before the album’s release:
I love being there, I love America, I love the feeling of the wide open spaces, I love the deserts, I love the mountain ranges, I even love the cities.
So having fallen in love with America over the years that we’ve been there on tour, I then had to ‘deal with’ America and the way it was affecting me, because America’s having such an effect on the world at the moment.
On this record I had to deal with it on a political level for the first time, if in a subtle way.
