Happy 13th, Pop!

[Vlad n U 2]

YouTube - U2 - Please

Among U2's top 5 songs ever recorded. Doesn't get as much recognition as it should.

I dearly wish I could have that music video. WANT.

 

[RavenBlue]

Happy Belated Birthday, Pop. You helped me extensively through high school. Boomcha!

 

[schnumi]

POP is just amazing stuff. U2 where still at their peak there and it defenitly deserves more praise. Howie B as well seeing how they were on a date limit really and how they had to work to get things done you can only respect the outcome.

It's just raw and i like that. And the best is it just doesn't sound outdated even now. Now U2 play more songs of this album!

 

[popacrobat]

they wanted to do some sort of Discotheque/Velvet Dress/ With or without you encore on Vertigo tour for sure, if not even Mofo/Discotheque/Velvet Dress (not sure it'd be in that order, but they did rehearse Mofo and definitely rehearsed Disco/VD/WOWY in that order) for the third leg. I'd say it's feasible we could get something from pop on the next two legs.

 

[prbiker15]

Already 13 years? WOW. POP was an amazing album to be honest.

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

Already 13 years? WOW. POP was an amazing album to be honest.

Happy Birthday my Dear POP! I've loved you all along!

 

[U2387]

Very good album that could have been great with the addition of Hold me...... and Holy Joe in place of Miami and The Playboy Mansion. PM would have been a good bonus or hidden track, Miami a good b-side.

I think Velvet Dress, Please, If God Will and Wake Up Dead Man provide the needed darkness/moodiness/commentary on the bleak state of the world. Staring at the Sun is the nice melodic hit that fits very well on the album. MOFO/Gone/LNOE/DYFL provide the electro rock edge that I really think could have defined the album had Hold me and Holy made the cut. It's not like these 2 songs are HTDAAB or ATYCLB or Window or SUC, they would've fit.

The reviews could have been "U2 takes Achtung Baby into the future with dark electro rock experiment." I don't know, I just think Miami and The Playboy Mansion cause way too many WTF's and they are not the kind of WTF's that really serve to advance the artistic quality of the album.

I will never understand how songs like Do You Feel Loved, Last Night On Earth, Gone, MOFO and especially Please are so overlooked in U2's catalog.

Like the majority here in this thread, I think U2 should play some of these songs on the next legs of 360.

The album is good, but when you think about it, there is a case to be made that Pop songs improved the most live of any of their albums.

 

[mobvok]

I went to U2Wanderer.org to look at a few of the samples listed. Couldn't find Fane (Discotheque) or Alien Groove Sensation. There's a contemporary Rolling Stones review in the atu2 database which mentions that Larry's playing the When The Levee Breaks riff at some point in Miami.

I found this review of AGS from June 1995:

In steps the 'Alien Groove Sensation' crying that all too familiar
'Is anybody out there?' with it's crisp drum snaps and an almost
indie-rock guitar riff floating over the top.

Who needs the actual song now?

I didn't listen to the whole thing but this:
YouTube - Naná Vasconcelos - Canto da Trayra Boia

at 1:15 the growing string melody might have been the precursor of the synths that open LNOE.

 

[mobvok]

An awesome quote from digitize's link:

The guitar sound that starts 'Discothèque' was him [Edge] playing an acoustic guitar through a ridiculously loud amp and a filter pedal.

 

[phommel]

POP IS FUCKING BRILLIANT!

And you are so right on this:

*POP*
Oh, please bring back some live interpretations for the continuation of the 360 tour!
The Claw was basically born for a return of these songs!
Discotheque, MOFO, If God Will Send His Angels (rehearsed in Barcelona 2009) etc!
And one more thing; the "New mixes" = . Don't tinker with this album!

 

[trevgreg]

PoP hits puberty...

I was in Korea when this brilliant album came out. I actually bought the cd at the PX on base and carried it around with a friend of mine out into Itaewon (a nice shopping district in Seoul). We wandered around and finally made it up some stairs and over some shops to this little hole in the wall bar that overlooked the busy streets down below. There weren't very many people in the bar, as we had a beer or two each and some lunch. I pulled the cd out and was looking at it when the young Korean bartender came up to me and was like "what is that". I handed him the cd and after looking it over he asked me if he could play it on his stereo at the bar. I said sure, why not.

It wasn't exactly how i had planned on hearing this thing for the first time, but what the heck? So he put it on and we heard Discoteque, which was already getting airplay on the radio, then Do You Feel Loved, which i though was cool but... still different for u2. Anyway, the bartender seemed to like it. Then MOFO came blaring through the speakers, the bartender turned it up, my friend and i exchanged glances as we drank our beers. The sound coming through those speakers was amazing! My friend asked me with one eyebrow raised "are you sure this is u2? doesnt sound like anything i remember from them?"

We listened to some more of it and that afternoon i realized this was the perfect way to get my first listen at a new u2 album, sitting in a bar in a strange land drinking some beers in the early afternoon! Down below us the traffic was completely fucked, cars everywhere with horns honking every few seconds, angry Koreans screaming out their car windows at each other like they were from New York. It really didn't sound so out of place with something like MOFO blaring out of the bar speakers...i guess for a few minutes the world finally made some sense.

Love that story! Must've been a memorable day, huh?

 

[Rafiennes]

I have been crazy obsessed with this album for the last two weeks. So much so that I started writing an article or thesis in defense of the album.

No clue what to do with it, but it just seemed like something to write.

POP is one of the band's best albums -- even if they don't think it is.

 

[mikal]

I have been crazy obsessed with this album for the last two weeks. So much so that I started writing an article or thesis in defense of the album.

No clue what to do with it, but it just seemed like something to write.

POP is one of the band's best albums -- even if they don't think it is.

yep. even though i've always loved the album, i always thought the 2nd half was a little weak. that changed a couple years ago though when i rediscovered the excellence of songs like "Velvet Dress", "Wake Up Dead Man", and "Miami".

 

[BVS]

I have been crazy obsessed with this album for the last two weeks. So much so that I started writing an article or thesis in defense of the album.

Who says U2 fans are obsessed...

 

[BigMacPhisto]

Let's not go for historical revisionism and instead play the godawful radio edit of "Discotheque" which helped sink the album before it had a chance.

 

[65980]

I think Pop marked the moment when U2 passed being a contemporary band and became rock veterans. When Zooropa came out, I was 17 and everybody was into them. When Pop came out, I was just 21 and almost nobody I knew bought the album or was very interested in it. We still respected them, but they seemed to have become elder-statesmen (which, I suppose, makes them senior citizens now).

 

[monsieur fly]

What a record! Let's hope we hear some of it played live this year.

 

[djerdap]

One of their best albums. The darkness and desperation that is quite notably in the forefront during the whole record is unique in the discography. And I love the unpolished feel of it. Thank God they didn't tinker with it as much as they did on some of their more recent releases. Not to mention most of the songs are amazing live.

 

[Katiesheb]

Who says U2 fans are obsessed...

 

[vertigo-girl]

I love that album, one of the best in whole discography, it always has an special atmosphere for me. happy 13th!

 

[Yahweh]

Awesome record, hard to believe its been 13 years still sounds brand new today. It will always be in my top 3 of the entire U2 collection....Do You Feel Loved, I feel is one of the most underrated songs

 

[pitt_norton]

I'll just quote myself when I posted about my love about POP last year.

POP is my favourite U2 album. I played that album daily from its release day all year long. Sometimes twice over daily. I've never gotten sick of it and it's the album I know most intimately... I just loved when I heard the songs for the very first time on a radio station, I actually saw colour emit from the speakers! For example, I saw both Do you Feel Loved and Mofo emit yellow....

What surprised me when I opened the booklet eventually was that these songs lyrics were presented within that actual colour scheme...

My absolute favourite track on POP is Velvet Dress. That just takes me THERE. The slow beginning, Bono croaking out lyrics which then transitions into a melodic chorus vocal, just as the slinky bass slides in with a simple restrained direct drum beat. But magic hour is when all that stops and Edge comes in with his jazzy guitar solo and paints a starfield along with some crystal chimes!!! To which Adam compliments with Bass that smoothly shudders into the distance with the next chord... The song just builds with layers upon layers. I love it. A complete epic.

Listening to POP I knew I just wanted more of it. And my hopes were completely raised when I read in a music magazine that U2 was planning to release a companion album!!! To be entitled Rather Go Blind, the album was to be similar to Rattle and Hum with unused studio songs with live performances from Popmart. One of the studio songs set to be on the album was... City of Blinding Lights. I would love to hear what the POP version of that song is like... but alas it never came...

The last paragraph really kills me to this day.

 

[popacrobat]

What magazine did you read that in?

 

[pitt_norton]

I couldn't tell you.. it was so long ago during a casual browsing of magazines at the stand.

But that blurb of information burnt itself into my mind the moment I read it. It had a new track title called "City of Blinding Lights" which just opened my imagination to some sort of soaring track based on the look of the Popmart tour.

I'd wager if this release had come, "Big Girls Are Best" would definitely have been on it as well... what a little gem that is.

 

[popacrobat]

Yeah, I knew that City was spawned during the Pop sessions, at least some part of it. I know the idea behind the eventual lyric came after the post 9-11 shows in New York, but I had read that musically, City originated from the Pop sessions.

Interesting about the companion album though, that's the first I've ever heard of this. pretty interesting. I can't imagine after the backlash that they had with Rattle and Hum that they'd ever go that route again unless they were ridiculously confident in the concept and material they'd have to go along with it.

 

[tsweeney]

I found a clip of Alien Groove Sensation on the internet as well as Fane. The sample of Fane U2 used was a drum loop. Alien Groove Sensation sounds a lot like DYFL.

I went to U2Wanderer.org to look at a few of the samples listed. Couldn't find Fane (Discotheque) or Alien Groove Sensation. There's a contemporary Rolling Stones review in the atu2 database which mentions that Larry's playing the When The Levee Breaks riff at some point in Miami.

I found this review of AGS from June 1995:



Who needs the actual song now?

I didn't listen to the whole thing but this:
YouTube - Naná Vasconcelos - Canto da Trayra Boia

at 1:15 the growing string melody might have been the precursor of the synths that open LNOE.

 

[Salome]

the album shows how good U2 is
even though half the tracks are undercooked songs (musically, lyrically its mostly great) with ill fitting production the album still scores about 7 / 10
a belated happy one

 

[MrPryck2U]

Happy 13th, Pop! Can't believe it's been 13 years already. Arguably U2's most debated album amongst fans. Loved the album and the tour. Bono's muscleman outfit... not so much.

Oh yeah, Gone is my favorite song on it.

 

[Mrs. Garrison]

Love that story! Must've been a memorable day, huh?

thank you. It was indeed a memorable day. I think i spent the rest of that afternoon wandering around the busy streets with a beer in my hand (or two) and not a care in the world. i dont even know where i slept that night.

God those were the days...

 

[deltau922]

Loooooooove me some Pop. Top 3 album, and Popmart saw the best setlists of any tour.