Originally posted by zooropa93:Did the whole album on the way to work... brilliant, just amazing. I recks we should all listen tonight.
Originally posted by cyborgninja117:I should really listen to Pop a lot more.
I'm aware of the band re-recording some of the songs...did they ever re-record Please to be more like the live version? For me, the live performances (especially the Mexico performance) are right up their with the best stuff the band has done.
Originally posted by wowow:Not even an Instagram of the guys concerning Pop. I really like this album, love it at some points even, why no recognition?
Originally posted by CMIPalaeo:I believe Larry has remarked that Sarajevo was U2's finest hour.
Larry Mullen Jr: "I remember after the Pop record being so gutted that Staring At The Sun. . . it should have been a f****** huge single but we didn't have time to finish it properly. And I remember having to do interviews, and being asked what the album was about and [does mean dog eyes] I had no. . . f******. . . idea. All I knew was that if we'd had one more month we could have pulled that song through."
Mullen: "We did that thing we always tell younger bands not to do. Which is book a tour before the record's finished."
"How about never put out the record 'til you've finished the record," Paul McGuiness notes, wryly.
This was the crux of the problem: U2 had run out of time and were now forced into releasing an incomplete album.
"By the end, it was just becoming a blind panic," Flood remembers. "I felt I'd let the band and myself down. Unfortunately when you're making a record with U2, it's a very high-profile place to make a mistake."
"It was like, Oh my God, this record isn't very good," Mullen confesses. "But that was because of the time constraints. If we'd had an extra month, we'd have been able to do a lot more with some of the songs."
"We just couldn't get the fun onto the album. The songs weren't good enough. The themes were there. Some of the melodies were there. But it couldn't seem to get airborne."
"Pop is the sound of U2 trying to make an ode to club culture without using the tool sof dance music, which were loops and drum machines and pro-tools."
"Pop never had the chance to be properly finished. It is really the most expensive demo session in the history of music."
"This was really the theme of Pop: big subjects for the basement. But it is not enough to have a good lyric or a great idea. If the tune or the musical location aren't right then you might as well be standing on a soap box at Speakers' Corner."
"So many songs on Pop were almost but not quite there."
"We wanted to make a party record but we came out at the end of the party. The dancing was over and there were a load of broken bottles and young people sleeping under tables and the odd row in the garden between lovers who've imbibed too much."