"The Singles Collection" - U2

Singles Collection (Not Official)

Track Listing:

Background Information

In 1992, someone, it’s not entirely clear who, put together this boxed set of U2 recordings. We do know that the box was numbered, and that packed within were 12 CD singles, which covered from “Fire”, up to and including “All I Want is You”. The CD singles contained within are a mix of the German and Austrian pressings of CDs. Based on the numbering on the box, it is suggested that only 9999 copies were produced. Still other copies were released with no limited numbering.

At the same time there was a similar set put together for Morrissey, using the same box, and with a similar insert. In the case of the Morrissey box the CDs contained within the box were the UK pressings. The Morrissey set was released in November 1992 and is recognized as not being an official release. Over the years it has been suggested that this U2 set was pressed by a legitimate store using their inventory of singles, but the fact the singles all come from different countries between the two boxes leads to some question there. It has also been suggested that this item is a bootleg produced in Italy, and is indeed not official in any way except for the CD singles themselves.

The Edge was interviewed in 1993 and discussed this box set:

We heard of this boxed set of cd singles being sold for some astronomical price – a legal anomaly – by this enterprising man who had bought up all the cd singles he could find, repackaged them in a box and was charging three times what they cost him. U2 fans who didn’t have the full set were buying it. They were singles that we had tried to maintain a low price for because our idea for the singles was that it was a way of looking after the real U2 fans who were going to buy everything that we produced. We made sure that whatever it was, it was good value and always tried to put one if not two original new songs on it.

The box is a nice box set, and the CDs contained within are legitimate. None of the markings on the box indicate any label, any catalog number or any copyright information.

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