U2 Album: “Pop [Import Bonus Tracks]”

Most people write this album off as "U2 trying to be a techno band." This is a stupid statement, and if people saw beyond the marketing image of the album and listened to the actual music, they would realise that there is only one song that would really be called techno; track #3, "Mofo", and through the rest of the album it is really just rock with some electronic overlays for effect. Immediately after "Discoteque" and "Mofo", "Staring at the Sun" makes thing undeniably 'rock' and no one in their right mind would call it techno. Then it moves on to "If God Will Send His Angels", which is a new spin on their former more folk oriented style, and then as the album progresses it becomes gradually darker and more downbeat, from the agressive "Miami" to the melancholy "If You Wear That Velvet Dress" and the forlorn "Wake Up Dead Man".

U2 had allready been using electronic elements in their music for years before "Pop", with albums like "Zooropa" and "Actung Baby". Producers like Flood and Brian Eno had helped them use these elements to give the music a more dramatic and intense edge, and in my opinion, it was really evolving U2's music and took it beyond the level of the feel good, folky, arena rock pop songs U2 became famous for in the late 80's, to make something more emotional and complex. This improvement really showed in Achtung Baby, and in Pop they pushed it further and created what I think is the album with the most emotional range and dramatic punch of U2's career.

Unfortunately they decided to slap this "pop" "techno" "discotec" label and look on it, and suddenly everyone wrote U2 off as "selling out" when in reality fan favorites like The Joshua Tree were much more "pop" oriented. The whole "pop" image was probably meant as a sort of sarcastic parody of U2's own sucess, but the joke went right over the public's head and they suddenly saw U2 as "technopop eurotrash".

Now, as a result, we have "All that you Can't Leave Behind" in which U2 recoils from the bad reception of "Pop" by merely rehashing the folky arena rock style that made them famous instead of actually trying to do something new and different. However, perceptive listeners with an open mind can be treated to one of the hidden gems of the popular music industry, and enjoy what is perhaps U2's best work. Give it a chance and you might like it...a lot.

After all that HTDAAB hype and the dissapointing, commercial and boring outcome, this album Pop is an awesome masterpiece.

Without a doubt, the most underrated ( even wrongly by the band !! ) U2 album ever. I'm 27 so I remember perfectly well those years. Pop, unlike what seems to be now, was acclaimed by all people, including U2 themselves. It's weird the fact that, having sold more than 9 million copies, having performed their most succesfully tour ever, Pop Mart ( even bigger than the famous Zoo TV ), etc, the band finally have decide to play safe and innocent music just for the charts, grammy and money. I still don't understand why they decided to sell out to that commercial world, by making safe, unexperimental and predictable albums like ATYCLB and HTDAAB.

Just Mofo alone is far better than anything both from ATYCLB and HTDAAB. U2 had many things to say, unlike what's happening now. Please is one of the truly best ever U2 songs, as well Staring At The Sun, Gone, Discotheque, etc. Don't listen to "new mixes" from the failed Best of 1990-2000, listen to original versions instead !!.

If you want to listen to the exciting and fresh U2, listen to these 90's albums.

Pop is the longest U2 album, and clearly one of the truly best, because IT'S AN ALBUM, not 11 songs for grammy awards, like ATYCLB and HTDAAB are. It's very dark, deep, different, etc, not the 2000 U2, a band who's just copying themselves trying to sound like "classic" 80's times.

You won't find any U2 album like Pop, because Pop doesn't sound like Zooropa, nor Achtung Baby, etc ( unlike HTDAAB, which clearly sounds like ATYCLB ) Pop itself is a whole new U2 era.

ENJOY IT

Horribly underrated! Pop is U2's most provocative album; it is ambitious, groundbreaking and deep. The music is awesome! Many devout U2 fans just could not handle the change in style, given the U2 pedigree up to this point. But this album features not only a wonderful new style, but the best damn lyrics Bono ever wrote.

"Discoteque" is a very fun, complex song. It features some of the best music the band ever wrote, and puts one in a "party" like mood. This sets the wanted tone, which is that of "taking what you get, because it's all you can find". The subsequent listenings will help the listener to understand this is Bono's parable not unlike "The Wanderer" from Zooropa. "Do You Feel Loved" is among the same lines; it is a look at superficial love and peoples lives just slipping through their fingers as they waste time. "If God Will Send His Angels" is not only beautiful, but poignant. It seems to tell a similar story as the first couple of tracks, but from an outside point of view. This is also Bono's real point of view. This is his portrait of the human condition in the post-modern world, where "the cartoon network turns into the news" and "Jesus was put in show business". It is more or less a prayer that spirituality will overcome the material world.

Cue "The Playboy Mansion" and "Miami". Miami is more of a portrait from that same outside point of view, where "surgury is in the air" and "big girl with the sweet tooth watches skinny girl in the photo shoot". Plus, the electronic drum beat and the ripping sound of Edge's guitar is some of the coolest music on the album. "The Playboy Mansion" is, like "Discoteque", true, but more subtly in its satirical telling of conditions. But it is two-fold. The song also stands as a bit of an allegory for finding spiritual enlightenment, which, as a paradox, makes complex and in my mind, one of the best songs. "It's who you know that gets you through the gates of that mansion..."

Then there is "Gone" and "Last Night in Earth". Again, two different characterizations. "Gone" is the honest Bono, talking about the life and dullness of true celebrity. "Last Night On Earth" is the character trapped inside the spiritless life, who trys to live as if it was his last night on earth. He "is not waiting on a savior to come", and also realizes "she'll be dead soon and then she'll sleep".

"Staring at the Sun" is also complex, but very likeable. Of any song on the album, it seems the most likely to me to be a hit single. What more do I say about this one? Great music and great lyrics. This is true Bono view again. Read the lyrics and think Plato.

"It You Wear That Velvet Dress" seems to me to not fit in thematically with the other songs, but this should bother you not. The music is wonderful. It is so atmospheric. This is one of the most intense and sexual sounding love songs I have ever heard. Edge's guitar is like a single, sexy voice that utters something but once and is followed audibly only by echoes and tingles in the listeners' ears. Bono's voice is so amazing and sexual. This is the kind of performance that makes me realize that I do indeed like women, because if I didn't, I would know it while listening to him.

"Mofo", "Please", and "Wake Up Dead Man" are hands down three of the best from the U2 catalogue ever. "Mofo" stands as one of the most complicated songs musically and lyrically for the men. It utters mixed themes; searching for love and spirituality and mourning the loss of a Mother are among them. "Please" is about violence and the lack of peace in the world. Again, it doesn't to me seem to fit thematically with the other songs about searching or not searching for God, but it remains as my favorite song on the album. "Wake Up Dead Man" is the most beautifully heartbreaking and poignant song ever written by U2. It is the honest Bono, and maybe in some way, the other character, having come to grips with the material and spiritual world crashing down around them. This does not end on a happy note. This is a heartwrenching song. It is a confession that the world is awful and human beings are a mistake. It is not only a confession, but a longing; where is the light and the hope (go back to "If God Will Send His Angels")?

If there is one U2 cd worth analyzing and giving hard thought to, this is certainly it. It is one of my favorites, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone.

Peace.

U2 made a serious effort to lead instead of follow. This has a much more original feel to the playing. Pop is the last classic album that still sounds great after all these years.

Pop provides a compelling snapshot portrait of their career as a experimental band. After this overlooked and underrated gem, they sold out by releasing corporate radio-friendly items as ATYCLB and HTDAAB. After listening to this, you'll know why U2 was the quintessential band - credits must given to Radiohead as well - of the 90's.

It's so sad that U2 left behind an amazing musical legacy by releasing those disastrous mainstream albums, supported by their friendly media, I mean, Billboard, NME, Rolling Stone, All Music Guide, Mojo, MTV, etc.

This one is a masterpiece among masterpieces. Their finest songwriting is presented here. Songs like 'Gone', 'Please', 'Discotheque', 'Do You Feel Loved', 'Mofo', 'Staring At The Sun', 'Miami' or 'Wake Up Dead Man' are such a brilliant ones, and on so many levels too. Musically it is a master work.

Pop is an album album that intellegently express vehement hatred toward the corporate world's replacement of human emotion and personality with businessmen behavior in their attempt to be "more professional."... sadly, U2 have become in that corporate sellout personalities.

A beautiful, intelligent album, which doesn't come along that often these days.

I'm so tired of former U2 fans whining about U2's experiments in electronica in the 90's. They act as if the band should have kept remaking the JOSHUA TREE over and over and never try to reinvent or challenge themselves as a group. U2's albums in the 90's were some of the decade's finest, and POP is no exception. I have little doubt that Radiohead would have had the courage to put out an album like Kid A had it not been for Pop. Of course Pop was not such a radical departure for U2 (following Passengers vol.1, Zooropa & Achtung Baby) that Kid A was for Radiohead, but it was still a brave new album at the time. For example, I think "discoteque" was almost unrecognizable as a U2 track when it came out, and that is what is so brilliant about it. These guys are blowing their own minds. Good for them. As for the other songs, taken together the overall production may seem a bit pretensious, uneven and over done. However, taken individually, the songs stand on their own as some of the best songs of a decade. If one takes a listen to the top songs of 1999, it all sounds like a mixed pop culture package. It sounds a lot like Pop -just two years ahead of it's time.