Rattle and Hum is a hybrid live/studio album by Irish rock band U2, and a companion rockumentary film directed by Phil Joanou.

Although Rattle and Hum was intended to represent the band paying tribute to legendary musicians, some critics accused U2 of trying to place themselves amongst the ranks of such artists.

He also contradicted Bono's assertion about Shepard, saying that Hawkmoon is a place in Rapid City, South Dakota, in the midwestern United States.

The set was different each night with the band throwing in some rarely performed songs, including "Out of Control", "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)", "One Tree Hill", and "Mothers of the Disappeared".

[18] While in Glasgow in late July during the Joshua Tree Tour, Rob Partridge of Island Records played the demo for the band.

[19] In late September, U2 rehearsed with Bell's choir in a Harlem church, and a few days later they performed the song together at U2's Madison Square Garden concert.

[30] Jon Pareles of The New York Times called it a "mess" that exuded "sincere egomania", and said the "band's self-importance got in the way" of their ambition for the album.

[35] Thom Duffy of the Orlando Sentinel said that Rattle and Hum is "greatly in need of a focal point" and "often sounds like an over-reaching attempt to claim chunks of pop history as [U2's] own story".

[36] Tom Carson from The Village Voice called it an "awful record" by "almost any rock-and-roll fan's standards", and said the group's failure did not "sound attributable to pretensions so much as to monumental know-nothingism".

He lamented the songs that presented the band's Christianity "as a fait accompli", as well as their proclivity for "jams around a couple of chords substituting themselves for considered song-writing".

[27] Writing in Rolling Stone, Anthony DeCurtis said that the record succeeded at capping U2's rise to stardom "on a raucous, celebratory note", finding it to be "most enjoyable when the band relaxes and allows itself to stretch without self-consciously reaching for the stars".

DeCurtis ultimately deemed it a "tad calculated in its supposed spontaneity" and said it demonstrated "U2's force but devot[ed] too little attention to the band's vision".

[31] In a rave review for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Hilburn called Rattle and Hum a "frequently remarkable album" that more than matched The Joshua Tree, and he credited U2 for reviving the "idealism and craft of [rock's] finest moments".

[28] J. D. Considine of The Baltimore Sun said that the album's songs "draw upon every musical strength U2 has developed over the years" and that the "sheer muscular physicality of its sound" set Rattle and Hum apart from its predecessors.

[40] Hot Press reviewer Bill Graham said it was U2's "most ambitious record" yet,[41] while John Mackie of The Vancouver Sun said it "should consolidate the band's stature as the Beatles of the late '80s".

[42] Cliff Radel of The Cincinnati Enquirer said that Rattle and Hum "proves the achievements of the band's previous album... were no accident", and that it demonstrated the group's ability to create "highly charged songs in the studio and on stage".

The review found the cover songs to be the weakest material but judged Rattle and Hum overall to be a "solid, versatile piece of work" that "leaves much of the best until last".

It was pulled by NME editor Alan Lewis, as it was feared that criticism of U2 would affect the magazine's circulation;[44] Sinker resigned in protest.

[30] At the end of 1988, Rattle and Hum was voted the 21st-best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published by The Village Voice.

[45] In other critics' lists of the year's top albums, it was ranked number one by HUMO, second by the Los Angeles Times and Hot Press, 17th by OOR, 23rd by NME, and 47th by Sounds.

[48] Roger Ebert panned the film as a "mess", saying the concert footage was poorly lit and did not show the audience enough, and that the band being "deliberately inarticulate" in interview segments was "not cute".

[50] Joyce Millman of the San Francisco Examiner described it as a "tediously pious and self-important" film that "successfully captured everything the faithful love, and we pagans loathe, about the biggest band of the '80s".

[52] Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer said, "Self-indulgent to the point of absurdity, U2 Rattle and Hum might be the silliest concert film ever made."

She said it compared unfavourably to other concert movies due to its lack of narrative, and that Joanou's reverence for U2 bordered on "unintentional hilarity", adding, "Rob Reiner and company couldn't do a Spinal Tap on this; Rattle and Hum is already a parody.

[54] Michael MacCambridge of the Austin American-Statesman disagreed with the film's detractors, calling it a "very good and at times excellent concert movie" whose "studied avoidance of drifting into self-parody" distinguished it from predecessors and headed off comparisons to This Is Spinal Tap.

Silverman praised the documentary scenes with the individual band members and the "beautiful artistic" performance footage, and said the director "succeeded in bringing U2 to the screen in a creative, introspective and exciting film that will add to the legend and preserve the integrity of the decade's most influential contribution to rock".

[56] Barbara Jaeger of The Record called it a "moving, beautifully photographed look at the group" that properly captured the energy of their live performances.

[58] Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times said the film "records some savagely compelling live performances" and offers proof of why "this unlikely band... are often ranked by critics as the world's best".

He thought that despite Joanou not setting the proper context for the film or conducting an engaging interview with U2, "he matches the impassioned sounds with spectacular visuals".

[71] U2 believe that audiences misunderstood the group's collaboration with King on Rattle and Hum and the Lovetown Tour, and they described it as "an excursion down a dead-end street".