Much of The Unforgettable Fire Tour moved into indoor arenas as U2 began to win their long battle to build their audience. The complex textures of the new studio-recorded tracks, such as "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Bad", were problematic to translate to live performance. One solution was programmed sequencers, which the band had previously been reluctant to use, but are now used in the majority of the band's performances. Songs on the album had been criticised as being "unfinished", "fuzzy", and "unfocused", but were better received by critics when played on stage.

U2 participated in the Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief at Wembley Stadium in July 1985. U2's performance was a turning point in the band's career. During the song "Bad", Bono leapt down off the stage to embrace and dance with a fan, showing a television audience of millions the personal connection that Bono could make with audiences. In 1985, Rolling Stone magazine called U2 the "Band of the 80s," saying that "for a growing number of rock-and-roll fans, U2 have become the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters."

The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum (1986–1989)

Motivated by friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Keith Richards, the band looked back to the roots of rock music, and Bono focused on his skills as a song and lyric writer. Realising "that U2 had no tradition", the band explored American blues, country, and gospel music. For their fifth album, the band wanted to build on The Unforgettable Fire's atmospherics, but instead of its out-of-focus tracks, they sought a harder-hitting sound within the strict discipline of conventional song structures. U2 interrupted their 1986 album sessions to serve as a headline act on Amnesty International's A Conspiracy of Hope tour, but rather than be a distraction, the tour added extra intensity and power to their new music. In his 1986 travels to San Salvador and Nicaragua, Bono saw the distress of peasants bullied in internal conflicts subject to American political intervention. This first-hand experience later became a central influence on the new music. The band wanted music with a sense of location, a 'cinematic' quality; the album's music and lyrics draw on imagery created by American writers whose works the band had been reading.

The wild beauty, cultural richness, spiritual vacancy and ferocious violence of America are explored to compelling effect in virtually every aspect of The Joshua Tree —in the title and the cover art, the blues and country borrowings evident in the music...Indeed, Bono says that "dismantling the mythology of America" is an important part of The Joshua Tree's artistic objective.

— Rolling Stone

The Joshua Tree was released in March 1987. The album juxtaposes antipathy towards America against the band's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedom, and what it stands for. It became the fastest-selling album in British chart history, and was number one for nine weeks in the United States. It won U2 their first two Grammy Awards. The album's first two singles, the "the rock & roll bolero" "With or Without You" and the rhythmic gospel "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", quickly went to number one in the U.S. U2 became the fourth rock band to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, which declared U2 "Rock's Hottest Ticket". The album brought U2 a new level of success and is cited by Rolling Stone as one of rock's greatest. The Joshua Tree Tour was the first during which the band played numerous stadium shows alongside smaller arena shows.

The documentary Rattle and Hum featured footage recorded from The Joshua Tree Tour, and the accompanying double album of the same name included nine studio tracks and six live U2 performances. Released in record stores and cinemas in October 1988, the album and film were intended as a tribute to American music. The film included tracks recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis and tracks performed with Bob Dylan and B. B. King. Despite a positive reception from fans, Rattle and Hum received mixed reviews from both film and music critics; one Rolling Stone editor spoke of the album's "excitement", another described it as "bombastic and misguided". The film's director, Phil Joanou, described it as "an overly pretentious look at U2". Most of the album's new material was played on 1989's Lovetown Tour, which primarily consisted of shows in Australia and Europe. With a sense of musical stagnation, Bono announced at an end-of-decade concert that U2 had come to the end of an era and had to "...go away and just dream it all up again".

Achtung Baby , Zoo TV, and Zooropa (1990–1993)

Buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy, and industrial (all good) and earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, rockist and linear (all bad). It was good if a song took you on a journey or made you think your hifi was broken, bad if it reminded you of recording studios or U2...Berlin became a conceptual backdrop for the record. The Berlin of the Thirties—decadent, sexual and dark—resonating against the Berlin of the Nineties—reborn, chaotic and optimistic...

— Brian Eno on the recording of Achtung Baby

In November 1991, U2 released their seventh studio album, Achtung Baby . Stung by criticism of Rattle and Hum , the band made a calculated change in musical and thematic direction, their most dramatic since The Unforgettable Fire . Sonically, Achtung Baby incorporated dance, industrial, and alternative rock influences of the time and the band referred to the album as the sound of "four men chopping down the Joshua Tree". Thematically, it was a more inward-looking and personal record; it was darker, yet at times more flippant, than the band's previous work. Commercially and critically, it has been one of the band's most successful albums and a crucial part of the band's early 1990s reinvention. Like The Joshua Tree , it is cited by Rolling Stone as one of rock's greatest.

The band initially worked on Achtung Baby in East Berlin, seeking inspiration and renewal on the eve of German reunification. Daniel Lanois produced the album with assistance from Brian Eno. In the Berlin sessions, conflict arose within the band over the quality of material and musical direction. While Adam and Larry preferred a sound similar to U2's previous work, Bono and The Edge were inspired by alternative and European dance music and advocated a change. Weeks of slow progress, arguments, and tension subsided when the band rallied around a chord progression The Edge had written, creating the song "One".

The Zoo TV Tour of 1992–1993 was a multimedia event, and showcased an extravagant but intentionally bewildering array of hundreds of video screens, upside-down flying Trabant cars, mock transmission towers, satellite TV links, subliminal messages, and Bono's over-the-top stage characters such as "The Fly", "Mirror-Ball Man", and "(Mister) MacPhisto". The extravagant shows were intentionally in contrast to the austere staging of previous U2 tours, and mocked the excesses of rock and roll by appearing to embrace these very excesses. The shows were, in part, U2's way to represent the pervasive nature of cable television and its blurring of news, entertainment, and home shopping. Prank phone calls were made to President Bush, the United Nations, and others. Live satellite uplinks to war-torn Sarajevo caused controversy.

Quickly recorded and released during a break in the Zoo TV tour in mid-1993, the Zooropa album continued many of the themes from Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV tour. Initially intended as an EP, the band expanded Zooropa into a full-length LP album. It was an even greater departure from the style of their earlier recordings, incorporating techno influences and other electronic effects. In keeping with this intentional departure from their previous style, Bono stepped down from the mic for the final track on Zooropa , and invited Johnny Cash to perform "The Wanderer".

Most of the songs were played at least once during the 1993 leg of the tour, which extended through Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan; half the album's tracks became fixtures in the set.

Passengers, Pop , and PopMart (1995–1998)

In 1995, U2 released an experimental album called Original Soundtracks 1 . Brian Eno, producer of three previous U2 albums, contributed as a full partner, including writing and performing. For this reason, and due to the record's highly experimental nature, the band chose to release it under the moniker "Passengers" to distinguish it from U2's conventional albums. It was commercially unnoticed by U2 standards and it received generally poor reviews. However, the single "Miss Sarajevo" featuring Luciano Pavarotti, and which Bono cites as one of his favourite U2 songs, was a hit.

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