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  1. Originally posted by drewhiggins:[..]

    So you're not a fan of it, then? I guess it depends....but sometimes the best approach is to take the best songs, program them in a certain order (however you like) and go from there.




    mmm.....

    Never did it like that.
    Im gonna give it a change...
  2. I actually don't understand why some say Pop should be reworked. It's good as it is with great tracks. I prefer the original Gone and Discotheque above the reworked versions from the Best Of CD and Last Night On Earth, Mofo, Do You Feel Loved, Wake Up Dead Man, If God Will Send His Angels, Please and Staring at the Sun finish the album. The rest sucks.
  3. Pop always will be a controversial album. Nothing is changing that and it only shows the U2 that dares to take risks with their albums.

    For me Pop is the most diverse u2 album but some will rather jump from a bridge than listen to songs like Mofo
  4. I think the best way to appreciate POP is by listening to it in this order (and you could include some B-Sides if you like, like Happinnes is a Warm Gun or something).

    1. Discotheque
    2. Do You Feel Loved
    3. Last Night on Earth
    4. Mofo
    5. Gone
    6. Staring at the Sun
    7. If God Will Send His Angels
    8. Please
    9. If You Wear That Velvet Dress
    10. Wake Up Dead Man

    Personally, I wouldn't listen to The Playboy Mansion and Miami. That's how I would enjoy the album most. Start with disco-y songs that are upbeat and then slowly decrease that into pure class songs like IGWSHA and Please. This seems a good order to me, but that's just my opinion, some people will now hate me for missing out The Playboy Mansion:p. Oh well

    I do like Pop a lot, at first I wasn't keen but now I am.
  5. For me is Pop almost the best album (really best is Achtung, of course).
    Don't like versions from Best of, but Please from single is better (and live version is the best, what they've ever done) than from album. And I love songs like Mofo, Do You Feel Loved... The worst for me is IGWSHA.
    And last days I've listened to it many times... hope something will be played in Barcelona
  6. Originally posted by Alvin:For me is Pop almost the best album (really best is Achtung, of course).
    Don't like versions from Best of, but Please from single is better (and live version is the best, what they've ever done) than from album. And I love songs like Mofo, Do You Feel Loved... The worst for me is IGWSHA.
    And last days I've listened to it many times... hope something will be played in Barcelona
    No spoilers, please. Keep the rehearsals on the Rehearsals thread, thanks
  7. Originally posted by u2spear:I think the best way to appreciate POP is by listening to it in this order (and you could include some B-Sides if you like, like Happinnes is a Warm Gun or something).

    1. Discotheque
    2. Do You Feel Loved
    3. Last Night on Earth
    4. Mofo
    5. Gone
    6. Staring at the Sun
    7. If God Will Send His Angels
    8. Please
    9. If You Wear That Velvet Dress
    10. Wake Up Dead Man

    Personally, I wouldn't listen to The Playboy Mansion and Miami. That's how I would enjoy the album most. Start with disco-y songs that are upbeat and then slowly decrease that into pure class songs like IGWSHA and Please. This seems a good order to me, but that's just my opinion, some people will now hate me for missing out The Playboy Mansion:p. Oh well

    I do like Pop a lot, at first I wasn't keen but now I am.


    Very nice list yes
    Unfortuantely The Playboy Mansion is one of the best of the album lol
    Together with Mofo, Miami and Please...
  8. Pop is one of my all time favorite albums. I got really into U2 my first year of University in 2005 and began collecting all their albums. I got Pop in December of '05 and instantly fell in love with it. I can't really explain why, but the songs really spoke to me at that time.
  9. Originally posted by markp91:[..]

    Very nice list yes
    Unfortuantely The Playboy Mansion is one of the best of the album lol
    Together with Mofo, Miami and Please...


    The whole Pop experience is truly an experience; I just loved it straight away. It just has something. HTDAAB, ATYCLB and to an extent, NLOTH, have not replicated it.
  10. For me I love this album but would like to see U2 give it to people like Jack Knife Lee, Mike Hedges etc... and say to them rework it and put your twist on it especially after hearing the tracks that Mike Hedges did for the Best of 1990 - 2000 and for what Jack Knife did with tracks off HTDAAB the end products would be interesting to say the least.
  11. I agree with Drew over the sleeve, I've always found it to be bloody awful, really tacky (whether that was the intention or not, I still don't think it works). It's not an "up" album either, it's more of a "downer" and thus the sleeve becomes all the more inappropriate. The sleeve for me would have only worked had the entire album followed the thread started by it's first three tracks. Unfortunately though, IGWSHA comes in at track four (very awkwardly so too, on the back of three pulsing dance-rockers) and from that point on, the album can't decide whether it wants to take the band's sound forwards or backwards. Some of the lyrics are very mediocre or very fidgety, unfinished, or lumpen attempts at cool (a similar problem to that of GOYB, but not quite as bad as that).

    But the icing on the cake of POP's mediocrity for me has always been that ZOOROPA has better ideas, more balls, more consistency, it actually sounds finished and it's a dazzling progression from their previous album in a way that POP wasn't and never will be.

    POP to me is the sound of a band uncertain which way to go - sure, there are still dregs of the adventurous U2 of ZOOROPA on the first three tracks, but those tracks sound more indebted to the music scene of the time than the genuinely original and great off-the-wall opening quartet on ZOOROPA. There are just too many standard U2 rockers and ballads (IGWSHA, SATS, GONE, WUDM, all with either very straightforward, very fidgety/unfinished lyrics) which keep breaking up and bringing down the album's more progressive side. The outros of MOFO and MIAMI are a bit cringe-inducing for me too, with Bono's "My mammy" etc. And MOFO also sounds like U2 trying to be either Underworld or Prodigy rather than being their own brilliant creative selves.

    Ultimately for me, POP is an album that doesn't sound finished. But it's also an album that seems to lack the great overall focus of many of their previous albums, especially the "breaking relationship" thread running through AB and the "fallout of the broken relationship in a fucked-up future" united chaos of ZOOROPA. POP is an album which really doesn't have anything to say or evoke on any kind of remotely consistent level.

    All of this said, I still have plenty of time for PLEASE and PLAYBOY MANSION - two tracks which DO sound finished and have lovely original melodies. DISCOTHEQUE is still pretty good too. GONE could have used that 2002 mix five years earlier, I prefer that mix to the original as well as preferring the single versions of LNOE and IGWSHA over their album versions - but those latter two tracks still really lack something for me (maybe something original to say lyrically, better lyrics overall or a bit more thinking outside the box musically and melodically).

    I just felt the album to be a pretty mediocre comedown after the thrilling experimental highs of ZOOROPA and even PASSENGERS. POP doesn't know what it really wants to be, so we end up with 50% half-hearted electronic-tinted songs and 50% more standard U2 fare. Their very next album showed exactly why the former category sounded half-hearted on POP - 50% of the band seem to have wanted to go back to using just the basic instruments again. The whole 100% of the band don't sound up for POP and it shows.
  12. How to appreciate POP album?

    Just listen