The retrospective continues…
U2 – Pop – 1997 (Buy it…if you dare)
In 1982, two years after their monster hit, The Game, Queen, following the logic that “If something worked on one song, might as well devote a whole album to it, took their cue from the success of “Another One Bites the Dust” and put out “Hot Space”. An album so bereft of originality and desperate to be hip, and so laden with disco and nightclub motifs that it was already too late and many dollars short.
Interestingly, U2 sort of did the same thing following, not their biggest hit, but shortly thereafter. And since, Zooropa did sell a lot of copies, they seemed buoyed by it’s success to continue to explore the dance rhythms and electronica that they were so well known for.
Here’s what fascinates me. Scroll back up and look at that album cover.
Now, look at this:
What do you see? It’s kind of uncanny, no?
Okay, let’s get past that and delve into this album.
Let’s see:
I Will Follow. Gloria. Sunday Bloody Sunday. Bad. Streets have No Name. Bullet the Blue Sky. One. Mysterious Ways.
Discotheque.
Why are a bunch of 37 year olds clubbing for god’s sake?? Why are they trying to be hip and cool? For their entire career Paul, Dave, Adam and Larry have all been the leaders, on the cutting edge of experimentation, the razor’s edge of rock and roll.
Discotheque.
And it really doesn’t get any better.
The anthemic U2, the one we have come to miss, with the lush melodies and wistful hope doesn’t begin to show up until Staring at the Sun, halfway in and even then, it just barely peeks through.
Bono isn’t all that great at writing about people, unless they are icons. He’s better suited to fist pumping, flag waving anthems. So, what the hell is he doing writing shit like “Last Night on Earth”? His social commentary on songs like The Playboy Mansion, fall so short and is so “on the nose” I have to wonder what bubble of headline news Bono lives in?
And this collection of haphazardly recorded notes is one big bloated mess. Not a single song clocks in under 4 minutes. Because whatever remnants of angular rock (Like the decade old, The Refugee, for instance) is gone for pseudo-sexy mid-tempo grooves. Dischoteque and Mofo TRY but they are so bad they just crumble.
So, it’s not just 12 boring tunes. It’s 58 minutes of boring tunes. Wait, it’s just an hour? Man, it feels sooooo much longer.
The funny thing is this is the same year that Radiohead’s Ok Computer came out. Glitch, rave, techno, house, was all over the place and some rockers got it (Radiohead) and others didn’t (U2). I wasn’t too keen on OK or Kid A, at first, but I did come to realize that they are inspired works of genius over the years.
Not so, this album.
Dull. Uninspired. And a bit of a legacy wrecker, I should think.
Grade D-
A Side: Staring at the Sun
Blindside: Please (But, really, it’s just that by this time you’ve been so beaten up, anything resembling listenable could sound like genius)
Downside: Miami (Just terrible.)
You finally wrote about one that I really didn’t even know existed. No, really. I have no recollection of this being in our reality in any way whatsoever.
Anyhow, I don’t know whether to fall down in admiration for this venture or shake my head, but that’s all wrapped up in the fact that I couldn’t tolerate more than a couple songs before I had to give up. If you’d ever like to team-up on a new version of the Trouser Press Guides — just as informative but a hell of a lot more fun – I’m there.
To date, the only U2 song I can listen to is their cover version of “Night and Day” on the Red Hot and Blue album . . . but NOT Bono’s embarrassing duet with Sinatra!
This was a blast, actually. I got to learn a lot about a band that I had always dismissed. And being 40 something it’s a real treat to discover something so good.
That said. If your kids are ever bad, don’t punish them. Just make them listen to Pop and write an essay about why artists do things like this.
I think they’ll get the message.
I did Weezer, but didn’t review it. Just did it for myself. And then I tried Everclear but I couldn’t get through the last two albums.
I figured with U2, I could do it and get something out of it.
Not sure who I will do next, though.