It's debatable whether Pop was "weakly" (note spelling) received or not, but can I just say for the umpteenth time that Rattle & Hum was NOT a weakly received album? It received largely glowing reviews and sold a gazillion copies -- far more than, say, All That You Can't Leave Behind -- at a time when the band was the biggest in the world. Rattle & Hum hugely increased their already massive profile and introduced millions of people to the band. It went 5 times platinum in the US (7 times in Canada) without U2 touring either country!
The "Rattle & Hum was a failure" byline is another of the U2 near-myths that the band themselves essentially created. About a year or more after the LP was released, a minor backlash set in with the critics and some of U2's peers. Basically, they were over-exposed (albeit they had ten times less exposure than nowadays), and started to become a bit of cliche in terms of image. It's something they wouldn't pay attention to now (when they're far more hated by more people than they were then), but back when they were 28 or whatever they were sensitive and took themselves a mite too seriously.
Had Achtung Baby not been a huge gamble that paid off in a big way, I am 100% sure that the band would not today be talking down the Rattle & Hum period at all -- but it makes a good story to pretend that it "failed".
