It’s true – the winners get to write their own histories.

There’s something a little revisionist about the track listing on The Best & The B-Sides Of – 1990-2000, but then it’s U2’s mirror ball and they get to go home with it if they don’t like the rules. In the spirit of the Zoo campaign that dominated almost the first half of the ’90s, chronology has been fed into the shredder.

First off, they’ve expunged ‘The Fly’ from the record in favour of its DNA swab ‘Lady With The Spinning Head’, and more’s the pity: it would’ve been the perfect opener and a demarcation line between Lovetown and after (although lets face it, the real shape of things to come was the cold soul of Cole Porter’s ‘Night And Day’, which surely merited inclusion here on the second set). But the sheer density of the track augured well for the Houdini-like straightjacket slippage of Achtung Baby. Mind you, a few songs on that album showed the strain, most notably ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’, which didn’t make it here either. And from later eras, there’s no ‘Last Night On Earth’, no ‘Please’, no ‘The Ground Beneath Her Feet’, no ‘Elevation’ remix with molten guitar break for us mugs who only bought the album. And surely ‘Walk On’ deserves a walk on?