"Sounds of the Eighties: The Rolling Stone Collection" - Various Artists
Series
U2 Related Content:
- "Gloria" (Studio Version) - U2 (04:13)
- "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (Studio Version) - U2 (04:39)
- "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (Studio Version) - U2 (04:37)
- "Where the Streets Have No Name" (Studio Version) - U2 (05:37)
Background Information
Time-Life was founded in 1961, as a division of Time. Starting in 1966, inspired by the growing record club model, Time-Life began to offer series of recordings, sent to a subscriber on a routine basis, typically every six weeks or so. These were sent “on approval,” meaning the buyer could listen for a short time, and if they didn’t like the particular selection of songs, they could send it back, no questions asked.
In the 1990s Rolling Stone in conjunction with Time-Life started issuing a retrospective collection of CDs titled “Sounds of the Eighties.” This early series features a collage on the front cover surrounded with a white border, and included releases specific to one year, as well as some special collections such as “The Rockin’ Eighties”. The CDs were issued on a number of labels including PolyGram, MCA, Sony Music, etc. With different labels being responsible for different CDs in the collection. A cassette version was also available.
In 1995, based on the success of the early releases in the series, Time-Life continued with the series, although this time they changed the images to a blocky hand drawn “Sounds of the Eighties” with a range of years on each CD. Six albums were issued, and this time out, U2 did feature on the compilations. The album “1980 – 1981” features the studio version of “Gloria”, the CD “1983 – 1985” features “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and the album “1986 – 1987” featured the album versions of both “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Where the Streets Have No Name”.
Before these Rolling Stone did a further collection called “25 Years of Essential Rock“ which also had included U2. But beyond these two collections, U2 did not feature on any further Time-Life releases in the 1990s.