I cannot claim to have ever given much thought to most of the classic examples. Either I was a keen observer of reality, or I am not able to make myself care enough about them to prompt my own self-doubt. There is an example of a Mandela Effect in music, which is being brought to the surface this year. That is the case of U2's album "All That You Can't Leave Behind", which is celebrating it's twenty-fifth anniversary in 2025.
What is the Mandela Effect here, you might be asking?
I was not prepared for this anniversary, because in my memories, this album was U2's version of "The Rising"; an album-length response to 9/11. "Beautiful Day" was an anthem to remind us we were still alive, and to focus on the good things we still had. "Walk On" told us to carry on and not let anything stop the progress of life. "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of" was obviously the song acknowledging the trauma we were going to struggle to move beyond.
It all makes such sense in my head, and the memories feel vivid. But they aren't real.
"All That You Can't Leave Behind" came out a year before those events, and while U2 was still riding high on their career resurgence on that day, the connection seems to exist only in my mind. If I didn't know about The Mandela Effect, I might be inclined to think I was crazy, having slipped through some wormhole in time where the only difference between universes is that U2 took one extra year to overcome their career nadir.
If I did not remember the album's origins, do I remember the album itself very well? That is another question that leaves me a bit perplexed. I remember the talk about the record being U2's return to form, and I remember hearing the singles all over tv and radio. Those memories include "Elevation" being U2's most rocking (at the time) song I could remember. As I recently listened to the album again, I was left puzzled by my own memories, as that song barely rocks at all. The entire album fits that mold, actually. While U2 was never a heavy band, the middle-aged gloss of this album has only cured with additional time.
It became cool to hate U2 when they pulled their stunt with Apple and iTunes, but I was disinterested in them long before that. I am one of those people who has never listened to their classic 80s albums in full, because the singles from that time have always struck me as mostly being dull. "With Or Without You" and "I Finally Found What I'm Looking For" are interchangeable dirges of boredom, where the most interesting aspect is how The Edge can go so long avoiding playing a chord.
But there was something about that moment in time when even I could not avoid embracing U2 a bit. I dearly loved "Walk On", and I found comfort in the way Bono's voice nearly breaks when he has to sound more passionate than ironically cool. Someone I cared about had pointed me to "In A Little While", where his similarly cracked vocal tried to tell me something about what love was supposed to do to us. It was not an album I would say I loved, or that I put in regular rotation, but it was always there when I was in a particular mood. The fact Bono is unable to sing a harmony gives U2's music a unique sense of loneliness and isolation, which has been appropriate far too often in my life.
Looking back at this album, I'm left with a few thoughts. 1) U2 is a quintessential singles band, because if this album is truly a comeback, they were never great at consistent greatness. 2) They wasted their second chance by buying into their own self-importance. They may still be a huge band, but they are no longer an essential part of our culture. 3) The passage of time grows harder to wrap my head around.
What this album does is make me think about time, memory, and all the ways my own past is lost to me. Much like how I misremembered the details of the album's existence, I misremember elements of my own. I have long threatened to turn my college experiences into a comedic novel, and for that purpose I wrote down as many memories as I could a few years after they happened. I read through those again this past year, as I was struggling and needed to remember times when things seemed easier. As I did so, many of those stories felt foreign to me, as if they happened to someone else. There were details I had completely forgotten, or mixed up, or had turned into personal Mandela Effects.
That is to say perhaps existential philosophy is both right and wrong. Life is as we experience it, but also as we remember it. The path may change after we have reached the destination, and it doesn't actually matter if we know this or not. We are where we are, regardless of the route we took. Questioning what cannot be changed is pointless.
And yet, that seems to be all I do. Thanks a fucking lot, U2. You always ruin everything, don't you?
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