Both albums were great.
In those days they showed they were also creativ
songs as stay, velvet dress and staring @ the sun are some of the best song they ever made
Love Zooropa, one of my favourites. POP not bad at all, but more work needed to be done, as we know. Please, MOFO, Gone, Staring at the Sun, Discotheque, Velevet Dress, Wake up - all great songs.
To my mind, the difference between Zooropa and POP is the difference between setting the pace musically and responding to the pace. During the creation of Zooropa, they seemed to be experimenting within the context of song structures, trying to maintain accessible musicality while making the songs sound different and interesting, keeping the old saw "Repetition is the death of art" in mind. Sure, the album does not have the sonic cohesiveness of Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby, but that's the point. Created while on a tour that attempted to reflect the zeitgeist - the fractured nature of Western culture - it was the result of that mentality. Between the creation of Zooropa and POP, electronica became the flavor of the month, and U2 seemed to approach the making of POP as if they needed to remain hip and up to date. They were listening to groups like Massive Attack and Leftfield (an altogether agreeable thing to do, in my opinion), and consciously adopted elements of that style of music and added them to their own. That, added to their return to plaintive earnestness, to some degree scuttled the album. POP is a very good album, but is held back by the approach the band took. Zooropa is one of my faves, in large part because they chose to "abuse their position and fuck with the mainstream" rather than respond to it.
I like to think of those two albums as our albums, meaning the hardcore fan. I like both of them a lot, but I agree that they are uneven. The great songs rank among U2's best, but both albums have weak spots.
Pop is great album - it's in my top 3. I wished ATYCLB will continue the way Achtung - Zooropa - Pop, but (sadly) wasn't. I hope new album will be on the same way...
And PopMart tour was the best tour...
I belong to the part of the community that respects U2 for their courageous sound progression and creative no- limits development on Zooropa and Pop - but I prefer a cohesive rock sound. On the other hand, nowadays they tend to produce over- polished stadium pop- rock that may be more mass- appealing but less creative.
Both Zooropa and Pop are interesting sound experiments somewhere in the vast field between art, pop culture, avantgarde and social comment. But speaking personally I'd enjoy listening to these CDs more if they were closer sound- wise to TUF, TJT or AB. Nowadays I even wish the raw energy of War back instead of multi- layered and overproduced arena pop- rock.
It's not the songwriting on these albums, the songs were good as ever. It's just the arranging and sound production that don't appeal to me. Just for example: Drum programming and triggering. When I finally hear Larry drumming on the album's closer "Wake up dead man" I know what I was missing.
fan of the month Every month we put an U2 fan in the spotlights, the fan of this month is user drewhiggins. Every fan of the month has an interview with us, you can read our interview with drewhiggins here.
did you know? Regarding the phone call Bono as MacPhisto makes at the RDS Dublin show 28th August 1993 to the United Nations, the reply he gets back is a pre-recorded message from Adam Clayton.
high resolution photos We have 696 high resolution U2 photos available for you, the biggest photo collection you will find. The latest photo we've added is 'October'.
popular concerts According to our user reviews, 1987-07-08 - Brussels, Belgium is the best bootleg we have in our collection. Our users also think that 1993-08-28 - Dublin, Ireland was a great concert since it appears the most in the list of favorite concerts.
notable live performance A great performance of Bad from the The Unforgettable Fire album was played in Dortmund, Germany on 1984-11-21, according to user rccstl.
popular songs Where The Streets Have No Name is the most-requested song from the song pages and quite popular. According to the favorite song lists of our users, Bad is the all-time favorite song.
latest site news Jeremy, known as haytrain here, is the latest addition to the U2start crew. Jeremy will be a crew member specialised in bootlegs, he will mainly work on maintaining our bootleg collection, making it even better, more r.. (read more)
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bootleg of the month Every month we have a bootleg in the spotlights, the current one took place on 1989-12-27 in Dublin, Ireland. You can download this bootleg, read reviews or write your own review here. You can also join the discussion on this bootleg in our forums.
news headlines We cover the news of many international U2 websites including U2.com, the most popular headline in the last two weeks was 'U2 rocking O2 Arena ... as the support act' from atu2.com.
"'Pride' is the best song we've ever written. We've done very few songs, normally we just make music. 'I Will Follow' was a song, but then the next one wasn't until 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. It's very different from the rest of the album though - there's nothing on there as straight as this."
- Bono, November 1984
It's damn awesome...well...discotheque not so IMO, but Mofo, LNOE, Please, HMTMKMKM really rocked live...and the PopMart MW's are the best around!
