FEATURE:
Pop at Twenty-Five
Revisiting an Overlooked and Divisive U2 Album
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ARRIVING four years…
PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Bergen/AP
after the popular Zoopla, U2 released their ninth studio album, Pop. Whilst an excellent album with some of the Irish legends’ best material, Pop remains divisive and underrated. It has won some positive reviews, though a lot see it as one of the band’s less spectacular efforts. Recording sessions began in 1995 with various record producers, including Nellee Hooper, Flood, Howie B, and Steve Osborne. Incorporating more Electronic elements than previous albums, the writing period was troubled. Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. was laid up due to a back injury, which meant that the other band members to take different approaches to songwriting. Because of delays and various other things, the band struggled to come up with material and were working on the album to the last minute. Not that this rushed and disruptive time resulted in poor material. If anything, I feel Pop has some brilliant songs, though the sequencing might let it down somewhat. Released on 3rd March, 1997, I wanted to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pop with a couple of retrospective features and a positive review. Whilst U2 took a more stripped-down approach with Pop's follow-up, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), and the songs from Pop did not feature in their live sets much, I feel the album is ripe for reappropriation and new light. Discothèque, Staring at the Sun and Gone are big highlights from the album. Pop did get some great reviews. Many felt U2 transitioned between albums with greater confidence; impressed by their invention and evolution. Others loved the sound of Pop and how it was different to their other L.P.s
I hope that there is celebration and fresh spotlight of Pop on its twenty-fifth anniversary on 3rd March. There are a couple of articles that revisit an album that remains one of U2’s less-celebrated efforts XS Noize looked back at Pop back in 2015:
“In March of 1997 U2 released their much anticipated ninth studio album POP, for fans and critics alike it quickly became their most polarizing release. There is a prevailing feeling that POP has become the orphan child in U2’s discography. The band seems to have all but abandoned playing songs from the album in concert. In many ways, it has become the album that dares not speak its name. I have never understood the negative feelings towards the album which I find artistically the equal of many of the band’s prior works and not as it is commonly characterized a career misstep. The band has often said the release was rushed and needed more time. In looking back it is easy to see that circumstances surrounding the creation of POP were stressful and rather counterproductive, but that does not completely explain why many critics and fans at the time dismissed the album. With the band currently on tour, it seems a good time to reexamine this woefully under-appreciated recording.
POP was U2’s most experimental effort but was not unique in the context of what was populating the charts at the time; electronic, dance and techno were rife. Why is it that a record that stretched just beyond the reach of Zooropa’s experimentation would create such a backlash? Why in the same year could bands like The Prodigy and Radiohead put out albums that shared many of the same musical or thematic elements as POP, end up being heralded and feted, while POP was left out in the cold? Some suggest in retrospect that POP was too complicated and dark for vast public consumption. Or was it possible that U2 has simply gone beyond the boundaries their fans would allow them to go; A case of this far but no farther? Since the time of its release, it has been accepted as common knowledge that Rock and Roll’s most astute operators had stumbled on POP. Many a rock group would love to have such a career stumble with 6 million copies sold, yet POP is considered a flop, it boggles the mind.
Any re-examination of POP requires a look at the surrounding history and specifics of the album. POP was the third leg of the musical trilogy that started with Achtung Baby, through Zooropa and finished with POP. Throughout the 90’s U2 had been one of the few remaining 80’s heavy hitter bands that had not imploded. They had successfully changed with the times, transforming the image they projected and their music. On Achtung Baby, their most successful outing, they began the process of welding pop, alternative, techno, dance and electronica together. Zooropa would continue that transformation adding a euro-centred ennui to the mix and even more glitchy goodness to their already successful sound. It followed that on paper POP should have been the triumphant culmination of the marriage of all these genres. On the release the band would go farther out on a limb, adding sampling, loops, programmed drum machines and sequencing. The band indeed had come a long way from producer Steve Lillywhite playing the glockenspiel to fill out the sound of October.
Work on the album started in late 1995 with a variety of producers, and boiled down to Nellie Hooper, Flood, Howie B and Steve Osborne; missing were the stalwart Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. The band entered the Hanover Quay studio trying for inspiration and improvisation with a no holds barred attitude. There was very little material written prior to entering the studio, very much like Achtung Baby. Quickly what started as a fun relaxed project ended up a stressed laden deadline looming agony. It became clear in Nov 1995 that Larry after his surgery was not ready to re-enter the studio as he was in excruciating pain when behind the drums, so he returned to P/T rehab and the remaining band members soldiered on. The full band reconvened in Feb of 1996 and Flood, Howie B and Hooper attempted to rework the material they had. They ran into a snag when Mullen had to re-record drum parts to replace loops Howie B had sampled without permission, chewing up more precious time that in hindsight the band didn’t have to burn.
In the meantime, U2 had mistakenly given their manager Paul McGuinness the okay to book the tour and now the album was anything but ready. The band was struggling and if not panicked, rightfully concerned as they were now under the deadline of having to have the album finished in time for the 1997 POP Mart tour. The release date was moved from December of 96 to March of 97. U2 simply ran out of time and the final product has never really been to their liking. So much so that they have re-recorded and remixed many of the songs after the fact. The resulting release led The Edge to described POP as a compromised project, and Mullen stating that given two to three more months it would have been an entirely different record. In contrast, Paul McGuinness stated that POP was a situation of “Too many cooks in the kitchen.” Historically POP did not fare as well as their prior releases in the 90’s. It did reach #1 in 35 countries including UK and US but its lifetime sales are the lowest in U2’s catalogue. Of POP’s six singles releases, three songs would not crack the top 40; something unheard of in U2’s recent past.
Hindsight being 20/20 it is easy to identify many underlying issues for the band in and out of the studio around the time of POP’s creation. One important factor was the lack of Larry Mullen’s input on the initial sessions. Larry has never been one to laud experimentation for its own sake and as always served as the brakes when other band members strayed too far down the path to outright musical oblivion. He served as the sceptical and practical consultant with the impeccable ear for what worked. Early in POP’s incubation, Mullen was sidelined and not fully able to participate in initial recording sessions due to back surgery and P/T rehab. The lack of Mullen’s advice and consent early in the process was a portent to other problems. Even more threatening than Mullen’s bad back was Bono's possible career-ending vocal issues. Each of these physical problems took longer to overcome than anyone expected and significantly ate into creative studio time. Another underlying issue was the band was exhausted with being rock culture trailblazers; they were still burnt out and distracted a year or two after the Zoo TV Tour. The distractions of real life were rife for the band members. Bono came off the Zoo TV Tour and literally had no routine to his daily life and had to piece his everyday life back together. Larry had started a family and was confronting his lingering back problems, Edge was at the beginning of starting a new family, and Adam was working on his sobriety and musical skills. In late 1995 the band had not completely recovered from their road weariness and the personal issues lurking underneath the surface manifesting themselves on POP.
When you talk to younger fans of U2 they tend to like POP and question why it is considered sub-par. Many older fans in general simply dislike the release. It is a strange dichotomy. If POP is listened to in the context of the immediate prior releases, Achtung Baby comes off as the initial revamp after The Joshua Tree trilogy. Zooropa further subverts what people had come to expect from the band and it all but tee up POP which is despairing, vulgar at times, complicated and weary, but also stunningly groundbreaking for U2’s sound. The released attempted to legitimize all those underground genres buzzing around while still being a popular hit. That was a laudable goal, however, the real problem was that beneath all the glitz and head faking experimentation, the album really touches on themes few ever discuss out loud and even less on a rock recording. Found here is a relentless collect of the loudest, angriest, strangest songs U2 has up to now released. Unlike The Joshua Tree where Exit was scary and angry but surrounded by comfortable songs; POP continually bludgeons the listener with very heavy thoughts and emotions. In the songs, you find ennui, uncertainty and world-weariness.
POP was the make it or break it album to justify U2’s continued musical experimentation while still attempting to sell a boatload of records. As history reveals it did not work. I find that a shame as I listen to it currently and am amazed at the originality and emotional bravery that are on display throughout the album. Listening to in hindsight it is truly an amazing musical masterwork. POP and its creators owe no apologies to anyone for its existence. There may have been many obstacles and underlying issues, but the release is as good as or better than many things on offer at the time of its creation. U2 would regain phenomenal popularity and sales figures as they returned to their more familiar songwriting and production with the wondrous All That You Can’t Leave Behind. That album would set U2 up for yet another century of stellar work. But POP would mark the last time U2 would be this experimental and risk-taking. In a way U2’s stumble with POP passed the trailblazing baton to Radiohead in 1997, that band would experience their first true breakthrough album that year with OK Computer and would go on to push the edges of the popular musical envelope. Possibly it took a younger less established band to be that ironic and convey so much questioning dread? In the end, POP is an under-appreciated gem that deserves more praise and recognition for the masterwork it is, and my fervent wish is that the band would give POP’s stellar tunes another chance to be performed and appreciated”.
There are some weaker moments on Pop. Whilst not perfect, it is also not a bad album. I have said how there are some great songs. Maybe the order they are in is wrong, and there are one or two tracks near the end that are not up to the standard of the best from Pop. That being said, I like Pop a lot and think that is it fascinating. Spectrum Culture had their say about the album in 2018:
“More than 20 years later, Pop remains a fascinating and frustrating U2 album. Time has knocked the novelty off some of the production, making some of the songs sound hopelessly dated and it also the first U2 record that features one or two embarrassingly bad tracks. However, Pop is also a startling sonic experiment for a band that was unwilling (up to that point) to turn to retread. According to Bono, Pop “begins at a party and ends at a funeral,” a very true assessment of a record that sounds confectionary at first but finishes in darkness.
Lead single “Discothèque” starts with a distorted guitar, a sound the Edge had been tinkering with since Achtung Baby, until a techno dance beat kicks in. The irony plays thick here and the band recorded an appropriately garish video, where they appear to be trapped inside a mirror ball, to complement the song. Though energetic and wildly different than any prior U2 songs, “Discothèque” can’t help but feel dated now. The same cannot be said for the second track, “Do You Feel Loved,” which is more of a slow-burner. Using some of the same sounds that would propel the Prodigy to stardom, “Do You Feel Loved” feels heavier, less purposely cheesy than “Discothèque.” Bono plays with his vocals, lowering himself down to a whisper on some verses. The idea of love has always been a preoccupation of Bono and the singer claims he purposely left the question mark off the song title, claiming that its inclusion would make the title feel too “heavy.”
For fans who remember Pop as the record where U2 went techno, the track that most embodies that statement is “Mofo.” Once again exploring the themes of his mother’s death, who passed away from a brain aneurysm that she suffered at her own father’s funeral in 1974, Bono eschews the anthemic sentimentality of “I Will Follow” with one of the band’s most inorganic tracks ever and easily the best of the three opening songs. “It was as if my whole life was in that song,” Bono explained. “Electronic blues death rattle. It takes the cliché insult ‘motherfucker’ and turns it into something raw and confessional.” U2 frequently kicked off their concerts with this song, a rattling lament turned dance party.
If the first three songs on Pop stunned fans, Bono and company returned to more traditional territory on the album’s middle portion. “If God Would Send His Angels,” an acoustic-tinged ballad, features U2’s traditional sound as Bono has yet another conversation with God, “Staring at the Sun” – the album’s second single – is a paint-by-numbers U2 single that didn’t chart well, but found new life live where Bono and the Edge played it stripped down as an acoustic duo. Meanwhile, “Last Night on Earth” and “Gone” are fuzzy rockers that sound like they could have fit in on Achtung Baby but are somewhat interchangeable. If you removed the first three tracks, Pop, up to this point, could have been U2’s return to form.
U2 returned to experimentation with “Miami,” easily the worst track on Pop and one of the worst songs the band has ever recorded. Almost a decade later, Q magazine included “Miami” in a feature entitled “Ten Terrible Records by Great Artists.” Featuring a looping drum and Mullen’s hi-hat played backwards, “Miami” also sees Bono rhyming the title with “my mammy.” This could have been a song best left to rot in the middle of the record, but the band trotted it out more than 60 times on the PopMart tour. It also begins the trend of bad U2 songs named after cities. Meanwhile, “The Playboy Mansion” is pleasant enough but feels dated with references to Michael Jackson and O. J. Simpson.
Just like Achtung Baby, Pop closes with some of U2’s strongest ever songs. The trio that finishes Pop redeem the atrocity of “Miami.” A dark calm surrounds “If You Wear That Velvet Dress,” Pop’s most ambient track. Bono’s vocals rarely rise above a whisper, making it sounds like some of the sensuous songs Pulp released in the second half of the ‘90s. The real showstopper is penultimate track, “Please,” one that has aged into one of the band’s most underappreciated masterpieces. Like God and love, “Please” deals with another one of Bono’s preoccupations: the conflict in Northern Ireland. Mullen’s drumming recalls his work on “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and the Edge’s guitar adds a sinister dimension. If the song had been released a decade earlier, it would have likely been a hit. The album ends with “Wake Up Dead Man,” a leftover from the Achtung Baby sessions, a strong, if somewhat downbeat way finale. As Bono pleads with Jesus to save the world, the song goes from dirge to full-on anthem. It is also likely the first U2 track to feature the f-bomb.
While Pop burst out of the gate and debuted at one number one on the charts in nearly 30 countries, its sales quickly flagged. It ultimately went on to sell 6.7 million copies, even less than Zooropa. Even the band seemed to distance itself from the record, claiming that it was made of compromise and would have sounded different had the band had more time to record. Since its release, U2 has re-recorded and remixed many of the tracks.
Still, without Pop, U2 never would have recorded “The Ground Beneath Her Feet.” Rather than press forward, however, U2 retreated and put out the backwards looking All That You Can’t Leave Behind three years later. Featuring mammoth hits such as “Beautiful Day” and “Elevation,” the album felt like a stab at commercial, rather than artistic, success. It worked, as it sold 12 million copies worldwide. Still, All That You Cannot Leave Behind feels like a strong U2 record but isn’t nearly as daring or audacious as Pop. As the ‘90s came to the close, so did U2’s most adventurous period. The proof is there on record. More than half of Pop is indelible U2, better than most of the band’s post-2000 songs”.
I feel Pop is undervalued and still sounds great now. Maybe there were expectations of what Pop should sound like. Perhaps fans and critics were hoping for something akin to 1991’s Achtung Baby. I love Rolling Stone’s review of Pop. They sat down with the album after its release in 1997:
“It is hard to believe we’re a whole decade away from The Joshua Tree — U2’s very own Born in the U.S.A., their Purple Rain, their defining moment of megastardom. Seems like only yesterday that the band was gazing out from the wide-screen desertscape sleeve of the 15 million-selling album: four Dublin boys against the world, about to conquer it.
Then again, so much has happened since U2 packed the stadiums of America with soul-stirring anthems like “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Like all of rock’s most astute operators, the band has striven to reinvent itself at every turn, to stay at least one step ahead of the game. Most boldly of all, after Rattle and Hum’s muddled flirtation with America’s roots music, U2 pulled up stakes for dark, kinky Berlin and turned themselves into the mischievous, neo-glam rockers of Achtung Baby and Zooropa. It didn’t matter that the Zoo TV Tour was post modern posing of the worst kind (who could forget Bono’s cringe-producing telephone calls from the stage?), for U2 had succeeded in changing the way we looked at them. Even if you took Bono’s demonic Mister MacPhisto, his Last Rock Star alter ego, with a large pinch of salt, you still had to credit the guy with a canny awareness of pop’s cultural bankruptcy in the late 20th century.
Advance word on Pop, the new U2 album, suggested that it would edge still further away from rock & roll heroics that the band was even experimenting with the spooky, flim-noirish soundscapes of trip-hop. The album’s very title seemed to indicate a conscious rejection of “rock,” a shrewd move at a time when America is tiring of alternative guitar sludge and even Billy Corgan is talking of using “loops” on his next record. (R.E.M., U2’s greatest rival in the Biggest Rock Band in the World stakes, may have called their last album New Adventures in Hi-fi, but the adventures in question sounded suspiciously old.)
As it turns out, you won’t find much evidence of trip-hop on Pop, although sections of “Miami” and “If God Will Send His Angels” come close to that mutant strain of the genre. What you will find is a whole arsenal of sound effects, tape manipulations, distortions and treatments designed to mask the fact that U2 are still essentially a four-piece male rock band. Unlike R.E.M., U2 know that technology is ineluctably altering the sonic surface — and, perhaps, even the very meaning — of rock & roll. In that sense, their competition now is not so much R.E.M. as it is Orbital or Prodigy.
What we can say immediately is that Pop sounds absolutely magnificent. Working with Flood, who engineered Achtung Baby and co-produced Zooropa, the group has pieced together a record whose rhythms, textures and visceral guitar mayhem make for a thrilling roller-coaster ride, one whose sheer inventiveness is plainly bolstered by the heavy involvement of techno/trip-hop wizard Howie B(familiar from his work on Passengers’ Original Soundtracks I).
Having messed with conventional rock sound ever since hiring Brian Eno to produce The Unforgettable Fire, on Pop, U2 stray considerably deeper into the world of loops and samples — of remix culture in general — than they did on Achtung Baby. There’s a Byrds riff here, a snatch of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares there. There are endless fascinating bleeps, squawks, drones and juddering — and a good deal less rattle and hum. (U2 aren’t interested in “roots” anymore, or at least no longer treat them as articles of faith.) Even in the realm of the once-trusty electric guitar, the distortion of sound is so radical that you barely recognize the instrument. Indeed, the Edge has a veritable field day on Pop, one minute out-Neil Younging Neil Young, the next taking the psychedelic funk of “The Fly” and “Mysterious Ways” to new extremes. Those searing, sheared harmonics are still there, but they’re compressed and warped and mangled into crazy new shapes.
Pop may turn out to be a make-or-break album for U2. Alone among the giants of the ’80s, they have a chance to carry their musical vision into the 21st century while still selling a ton of records. Are people still listening, or has rock & roll splintered into too many different tribes for a single band to shoulder the weight of our faith in its dream? Well, if people have stopped caring, it won’t be U2’s fault. With Pop, they’ve defied the odds and made some of the greatest music of their lives. Pretty heroic stuff, come to think of it”.
On 3rd March, U2’s Pop is twenty-five. Many people know songs from the album, yet many feel it is not as iconic and accessible as some of the band’s best releases. I wanted to spend time with an album that did divide people back in 1997. In 2022, songs from it are still being played. Looking at retrospective assessment, many feel it is a weird step too far or a bit of a disappointment. I feel it is an excellent and confident album from U2! Go and listen to Pop and spend some time with an album that warrants more love. From Discothèque to Wake Up Dead Man, Pop is a thrilling hour-and-a-bit that…
EVERYONE should hear.