U2 Album: “Zooropa”

Give U2 credit for not settling into a comfortable groove after the massive success of "Ach-Tung Baby," and just releasing more albums in that same mold. On "Zooropa," Bono and the boys decided to experiment with their sound and take it in unusual new directions. And while it doesn't always work, enough of it does to excuse them for not producing another single as catchy as "Mysterious Ways."

The album is best characterized by "Numb," in which seldom-heard-from guitarist The Edge mumbles the barely sensical spoken word lyrics over a gorgeous synthesizer background. Other oddities include the slowly building opening title track, the strange vocals on "Daddy's Going to Pay for Your Crashed Car," and the Johnny Cash collaboration "The Wanderer," with some bizarre apocalyptic imagery that closes things on an appropriate note. Even the more conventional songs, like "Babyface," "Stay," have an otherwordly quality about them.

Overall, "Zooropa" is not the place for casual fans to start their U2 collection. Nevertheless, it is a worthwhile challenge for the already commited.

U2 leaped well ahead of their fan base with this experimental record that is a way out there vision of the world and society.

Numb was a hit, and is perhaps the most bizarre and yet hypnotic U2 song ever. Lemon sounds like a lemon tastes. I can't explain it if you haven't heard it. Zooropa and Babyface also have that futuristic quality about them, with lots of Bono singing in a high-pitched tone.

My favorite song on the album, actually, even though it doesn't really fit here, is The Wanderer, with Johnny Cash. I simply couldn't get enough of that track when I bought this.

Basically, this is a good album with several intriguing songs and certainly is a must for fans tracking the evolution of the band. But it doesn't have the emotional gut resonance for me that some of U2's most inspiring work does.

Enjoy!

To the best of my knowledge, Zooropa was never intended to be a full album, but rather an EP that turned into a full album. Listening to U2's albums before and after, it's a pretty good guess as to why. This was U2 being U2, showing they can do whatever they want and doing so by creating an eclectic, infectious blend of electronics and a faint sound of rock n' roll. To futher confuse audiences, besides the lead track's ode/warning of commericial culture and a couple of love songs, the songs on this album are just plain weird - and that's what's so wondeful about it.

Numb was the lead single, featuring the Edge in monotone delivering a list of dont's with Bono providing incidental harmonies. All this done with interesting electronic sounds that have Eno written all over them. Hardly single material, but nonetheless engaging - and it produced one of the most iconic videos in U2's career.

Stay was the closest to standard U2, though the inspiration was a Wim Wenders film that was heavily featured in the song's video. Lemon, featuring Bono singing higher than ever before is a grand song, mixing strings with dance. These odd takes are just the singles. The meat of the album has even more to offer.

The two other standouts include Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, and The Wanderer. The former is a mix of loops and samples with a lyrical cry for independence while the latter shows that Bono saw Johnny Cash as a hip alternative icon a year before the American Recordings series took off.

What makes this album so special though is that it's a risk taking album. Finished on the heels of the highly successful Achtung Baby, Zooropa should have promised to be a straight rock n' roll record, but it was something far different. While it doesn't have the post-punk excitement of U2's early records or the straight laced rock n roll of their later ones, it's U2 doing a record that is all them. The album is at times crass, and sarcastic, while the production courtesy of flood and Eno, as before, is sharp. Definitely one of the highlights of U2's post 80s career.

Zooropa is the logical follow-up to Achtung, and the social-statement precursor to Pop. It is dark, foreboding, witty, and persistent. The songs stick with you, not only because they are beautiful, but because the message they send is powerful and prescient.

Zooropa is a profound political statement about the current state of the world (e.g., ``Be a winner / Eat to get slimmer" from the title track) with a kind of bitterness that shades every subsequent newspaper reading.

And it's just a beautiful album. I think a lot of people oppose it because its style differs so much from that of the more-classic-rock U2 albums (``The Joshua Tree" and before). On ``Zooropa", U2 felt they had hit a wall; they had exhausted the possibilities of the rock medium. So they forged their own path. And because everyone loved ``Achtung Baby", it's hard to see how they got to ``Zooropa". Give the album a good listen, though, and I think you will see where they came from.

This is one of my favourite albums, and confirms U2's place as my favourite rock group.

The first U2 album that deserves the label "techno," more in its themes than in its music. This album presages the rock-techno merger of the mid-90s, as epitomized by Radiohead's "OK Computer." A soaring crescendo of mind-expanding sound pours forth from tracks such as "Zooropa" and "Some Days are Better Than Others," while "The First Time" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" are post-modern descendants of classic "Joshua Tree"-era ballads.

The argument that "Zooropa" is a "slight" album cannot be maintained after several listenings. While "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" may appear, at first, to be a throwaway, it is, in fact, steeped in deep psychological pathos. "Daddy" reaffirms Bono's lyrical genius -- "You've got a head full of traffic/ You're a siren's song." Save for a couple of minor flaws, "Zooropa" is one of the complete rock experiences of the 90s.