GEN
Active topics
  1. Originally posted by deanallison:[..]
    It has been seriously neglected since after the elevation tour though although at least that tour did give some of the songs a 2nd run and ultimately SATS did get a 3rd run on E&I albeit ending half way through the tour. Only NLOTH is being more neglected.
    "Only NLOTH is being more neglected."

    My, what a tragedy...
  2. Plenty of better songs on that album than some of the material they regularly play. Vertigo and elevation or breathe and magnificent? I’ll take the latter please.
  3. So, just to resurrect the never-ending debate on the merits of Pop...and because I need a break from all the exams I've been grading...

    After recently finishing "Surrender" and thinking more about what Bono had to say about Pop in the chapter "Wake Up Dead Man"...I think I'm starting to come around to his/the band's point of view on the album.

    Just to clarify up front, ever since really getting into U2 back in 2005 post-HTDAAB I've ranked Pop in my top 3 albums (just after Achtung and JT). I still appreciate its daringness, innovation, irony, and the whole PopMart behemoth that accompanied it. But I can finally now more appreciate Bono's very critical points against it, including:

    1. Musically: Sure the band can incorporate certain electronic/industrial elements into their music in the studio via sequencers/synthesizers (nailed it on AB and to a lesser extent Zooropa), but they overshot it on Pop and it's more evident to me now as I listen than ever before that they tried to reverse course when the whole band didn't buy into the vision. Where I used to love the "unfinished" nature the album, it sounds weaker now because of it. I am totally on Edge's side when (according to Bono in the book), despite loving dance music himself, he resisted the idea of that being who U2 was: "if machines are used to compete in dance music, why would we use the band itself to do that?"

    2. Lyrically: Like Bono said in his book, U2 are closer to gospel singer Mahalia Jackson than Michael Jackson. Which is great...unless you're trying to make the kind of "Thriller"- like album they were aiming for with Pop. I loved reading Edge's remark to Bono: "dance music by nature has inclusive lyrics...where are yours?" I still think Pop has some of Bono's best lyrics, by the way, and used to love the "hangover after the party" description the band has used for the album in the past...but if you're trying to lyrically reflect a party itself - to "make the instant eternal", as Bono put it in the book - then the execution was not there lyrically, either.

    I think I realize better now, too, why the "Best Of" new mixes of some of the songs never sat well with me. On the one hand, the removal of certain "dance" elements always represented to me a betrayal of the original vision of the album. But on the other hand, the only other alternative is to go all out into full dance music territory...which the band never came around to, anyway, and would have needed a whole new mentality and thematic approach to actually make it work. It's just strange listening to Pop all the way through today and going through that opening trilogy of "dance" songs which are actually quite dark...and then landing in a place quite traditional with songs that mostly sound half-hearted.

    Maybe I'll change my mind again. And maybe this new take is the result of me delving into more hip-hop type of territory recently (thank you Kendrick Lamar) and appreciating what things like drum machines and sampling can actually do to make daring and creative music. I'm not saying U2 shouldn't experiment (they should!). Nor I am saying that they shouldn't still embrace some irony in their music/lyrics (they should!)

    Bottom line: I guess I'm just saying that I finally agree with Bono that the band either had to go all the way in embracing the dance music aesthetic to make the "instant eternal"...or not.

  4. Pop is a lot like U2's fan club: a rushed money grab that doesn't deliver.
  5. Originally posted by bpt3:So, just to resurrect the never-ending debate on the merits of Pop...and because I need a break from all the exams I've been grading...

    After recently finishing "Surrender" and thinking more about what Bono had to say about Pop in the chapter "Wake Up Dead Man"...I think I'm starting to come around to his/the band's point of view on the album.

    Just to clarify up front, ever since really getting into U2 back in 2005 post-HTDAAB I've ranked Pop in my top 3 albums (just after Achtung and JT). I still appreciate its daringness, innovation, irony, and the whole PopMart behemoth that accompanied it. But I can finally now more appreciate Bono's very critical points against it, including:

    1. Musically: Sure the band can incorporate certain electronic/industrial elements into their music in the studio via sequencers/synthesizers (nailed it on AB and to a lesser extent Zooropa), but they overshot it on Pop and it's more evident to me now as I listen than ever before that they tried to reverse course when the whole band didn't buy into the vision. Where I used to love the "unfinished" nature the album, it sounds weaker now because of it. I am totally on Edge's side when (according to Bono in the book), despite loving dance music himself, he resisted the idea of that being who U2 was: "if machines are used to compete in dance music, why would we use the band itself to do that?"

    2. Lyrically: Like Bono said in his book, U2 are closer to gospel singer Mahalia Jackson than Michael Jackson. Which is great...unless you're trying to make the kind of "Thriller"- like album they were aiming for with Pop. I loved reading Edge's remark to Bono: "dance music by nature has inclusive lyrics...where are yours?" I still think Pop has some of Bono's best lyrics, by the way, and used to love the "hangover after the party" description the band has used for the album in the past...but if you're trying to lyrically reflect a party itself - to "make the instant eternal", as Bono put it in the book - then the execution was not there lyrically, either.

    I think I realize better now, too, why the "Best Of" new mixes of some of the songs never sat well with me. On the one hand, the removal of certain "dance" elements always represented to me a betrayal of the original vision of the album. But on the other hand, the only other alternative is to go all out into full dance music territory...which the band never came around to, anyway, and would have needed a whole new mentality and thematic approach to actually make it work. It's just strange listening to Pop all the way through today and going through that opening trilogy of "dance" songs which are actually quite dark...and then landing in a place quite traditional with songs that mostly sound half-hearted.

    Maybe I'll change my mind again. And maybe this new take is the result of me delving into more hip-hop type of territory recently (thank you Kendrick Lamar) and appreciating what things like drum machines and sampling can actually do to make daring and creative music. I'm not saying U2 shouldn't experiment (they should!). Nor I am saying that they shouldn't still embrace some irony in their music/lyrics (they should!)

    Bottom line: I guess I'm just saying that I finally agree with Bono that the band either had to go all the way in embracing the dance music aesthetic to make the "instant eternal"...or not.

    Thanks for sharing this. I like the story about Nellie Hopper and POP in Surrender.
  6. Pop is and will still be my favorite, right after Achtung Baby.
  7. I would also add that, especially when it comes to the band's feelings about the albums, it's hard to divorce the merits of the album itself from everything that was surrounding it - especially the place in life everyone was at in that particular moment in time. And as Bono's book illuminates (but it's also evident in Pop's lyrics) it wasn't an easy time, it was characterized by a certain lack of direction and lack of confidence in what they were doing. Only afterwards Bono went fully in on his activism, Adam had only gone though rehab during the Popmart tour, the band went fully in on a "back to basics" approach and sold its return with ATYCLB and Elevation Tour as such (even if that album is in many ways more "pop" than Pop itself).

    I really like Pop, but I've long given up on hoping the band will speak more highly of it and I think the reasons they don't are pretty clear and understandable. Bono talks a lot about "great songs" and trying to find them and it's hard to argue that there are many of those on that album. It might be great music with some great lyrics, but it mostly doesn't come together as "great songs" on that most basic anthemic level that makes U2 shows such great experiences. Having said that - I really want to hear that blues version of Mofo live after Bono recently sang part of it in an interview!
  8. OK Edge, play the blues!
  9. I wonder how "The Playboy Mansion" sounds in those 2015 rehearsals!
  10. Discotheque, Mofo, Gone, Please, Wake Up Dead Man.

    All great songs, whatever Bono says.
  11. I forgot If You Wear That Velvet Dress.

    There. that's six brilliant songs to go with four other very good songs plus two silly-fun songs.

    I miss that ambition and willingness to experiment. I like plenty of what they've done since, but none of it has been as exciting or ambitious as Pop.
  12. There are some great ones on the album. I must say though, I still prefer all of them live over the album versions. Reflecting after all these years, I think Pop was just the next step in the band's evolution after AB and Zooropa. Who knows how the album would have been if they had, say, six more months to finish it?