Was going to post a thread, but forgot. Here's what I would've posted...
U2 has always had a degree of insecurity and self-doubt about them mixed in with seemingly boundless ambition. It's manifested itself in different ways. In the studio, they've always seemed to torture themselves trying to get it right - the sessions for UF came down to the wire with 20 hour days at the end to get it done, in the JT sessions they were so stressed about Streets that Brian Eno nearly destroyed the master tape of it, the band's near break-up during the AB sessions is well-documented, and in later years they would scrap an apparently finished version of HTDAAB to make a new one and compromise their artistic vision for NLOTH. In terms of how they presented themselves publicly, their personas, etc, they often seemed awkward in the 80s, as if they didn't quite believe in the bravado they were selling, and in later years, they too often appear to be chasing a relevance they used to have.
But for a brief period of time, maybe from the Zooropa recording sessions up through the early stages of the Pop sessions, they appeared to have a confidence that they never had before or since. They recorded Zooropa in only a couple of months and soon after were performing those songs live, they dove into the experimental Passengers project with Eno, in which they boldly played with everything from trip-hop to opera. They were rarely more creatively ambitious or confident in their ability to follow that ambition to a result than they were in those years. And ambitious they were heading into the Pop sessions, desiring to meld together rock, dance, electronic, and trip-hop elements with high concepts - the nature of consumerism and materialism in the late 20th century, crises of faith, etc - to create a club record that was still distinctly a U2 record. It was perhaps the most ambitious they ever were going into the production of a record.
Ultimately, it appears that they were unable to satisfy that ambition, even if a lot of people love the finished product. The sessions were plagued from the beginning. The band started working with a drum machine while Larry was recovering from surgery, leading to an intensification of the use of technology that the band had been immersed in all decade, from which the band would begin backing off of even before the subsequent tour was over. Combining all of the aforementioned musical elements proved difficult, and they could never really fully commit to making it a techno/dance record or a straight-ahead rock record. As a result, the record straddles between the former(Discotheque, Do You Feel Loved, Mofo, Gone, Miami) and the latter(If God Will Send His Angels, Staring At The Sun, Last Night On Earth, Wake Up Dead Man), with several tracks that take from both(The Playboy Mansion, If You Wear That Velvet Dress, Please). The band struggled so much picking a direction and getting the songs to sound they way they'd envisioned that they used up tour rehearsal time(after having booked the tour ahead of time in their pre-album confidence) to finish, going to literally the last hour before the deadline to give the record to the record label. Because they used up tour rehearsal time to finish the album, they were underrehearsed and were embarrassed in the first few shows, took nearly the entire first leg of the tour to get into the swing of things.
Whatever confident state of mind they might have been in going into Pop, it was gone(no pun intended) by the time the record was released, the tour was underway, and neither was setting the U.S. on fire. They were playing to half-empty stadiums while the record was getting lukewarm reviews. Although the band's live performance was back up to their standards later in the tour(producing some truly great and memorable moments) , and the new material was better received elsewhere in the world, the record remains, and will probably always remain, the most polarizing entry in their catalog.
We can argue forever about why Pop flopped in the U.S., why nobody(relatively speaking) went to the shows, and why the band have behaved as though they are so ashamed of the whole era. We can argue forever about the band dressing up as the Village people, picking the wrong singles, continuing to push irony when people were tired of it, being too derivative of other hot acts at the time(Prodigy, Oasis) etc etc etc.
I frankly, think it might be as simple as they underestimated how much the musical landscape had changed in just a few years. In 1997, the pop revival was blooming - Backstreet Boys and Nsync were already there and Britney and Christina were on the way. Hip-hop was becoming a greater and greater mainstream force. Alternative rock was beginning its great decline; grunge was over and most of the rock music on the radio was of the Third Eye Blind/Matchbox 20/Wallflowers/Barenaked Ladies/etc pop-rock variety. More serious rock acts like Oasis and Radiohead were at their peak in terms of mainstream commercial success(Radiohead are great to this day, but they've never been as big in the mainstream as they were with OKC), same for harder acts like Marilyn Manson. The Nu-Metal scene was exploding, a harbinger of hip-hop taking over completely in the years to come.
Simply put, I think it might be as simple as the mainstream music listening audience in 1997 wasn't hungry for U2's brand of alternative rock anymore, particularly when said brand was artistically reaching away from what had made them huge in the first place.
Whatever the reasons, the album wasn't as successful as the band needed it to be(everything is relative, it did sell six million copies), especially in the U.S., and today there are two views of it. Some see it as a misstep, during which the band got lost in ambition and technology and concept and got swallowed by all of it(and from which they returned to form with ATYCLB and HTDAAB). Some, including many here, see it as a great, exciting, brave, and yes, flawed record. As something to aspire to, because even though its flawed and has its issues, at least they were trying to do something great and interesting and provocative.
Discotheque, however it's regarded in the mainstream, is just a really good rock song, with a monster guitar riff and numerous earworm vocal melodies - from the 'you can this but you can't that' repetitions, to 'you know you're chewing bubble gum...', to 'you get confused but you know it...', to the second part of the chorus('looking for the one/but you're somewhere else instead/I want to be the song/the song that you hear in your head') to the coda('but you take what you can get/'cause it's all that you can find' with Edge's 'you want heaven in your heart' in the background). Also some love for the instrumental breakdown after the first chorus which was never performed live and omitted from the 'new' mix in 2002. And I love the boom-chas.
Do You Feel Loved is arguably the sexiest track they've ever put to record, with a heavy but smooth sound and a huge chorus alongside a borderline x-rated lyric. I always thought should've been a single, and it's a shame they never nailed it live.
Mofo's tremendous bassline - the whole rhythm section really - and Bono's painfully inward-looking lyric that practically screams 'I may be a world famous rock star but I'm still just a child grappling with his mother's death and a man grappling with how to be a good father and husband while doing all of this' make it an intense headphone experience and an explosive live performance. As heavy a track as they've ever done.
If God Will Send His Angels takes the album on a left turn into more straight-ahead pop-rock territory. The closest thing to a ballad on this record other than Velvet Dress, I've always loved the minimalist riff, the vocal melodies, Bono's delivery, the lyric about someone at their wit's end regarding their faith, and the trip-hop coda of the album version.
Bono always though Staring At The Sun should've been a huge hit, and although some people think it's too bland or stale or Oasis-wannabe or whatever, I've always loved it. Immensely catchy, a big, warm guitar riff in the chorus, and a thought-provoking lyric. While I like the acoustic versions, I wish they would've come back to the full-band electric version live.
Last Night On Earth is just a huge rock song. From the first notes, everything is gaining momentum as it leads into that huge, earth-shaking chorus. This is one of the tracks I used to enjoy just turning up loud and rocking out to the most. And the live version. My goodness the riffage at the end. How the band thinks this didn't work live is beyond me.
Gone is just a tremendous song, from the crying sirens Edge gets out his guitar, to the powerful performance of the rhythm section, to Bono's impassioned vocal take, to the dark atmospherics and subtle, aching background vocals, to the great lyric, it's just clearly one of the best tracks here. This one needs to come back to the live set.
Miami is simultaneously a big joke here(U2 wrote Miami) and also greatly appreciated for its live renditions(in which the riffs get ten times bigger). Yes, the lyric is kind of crap, but even on the studio version, I find it be sonically pretty interesting with the riffs and the atmospherics between the riffs. If it had been recorded the way it was played live, I don't think it would be a joke here, bad lyric or not.
The Playboy Mansion frustrates me. Musically, I like it a lot - it's got a mellow vibe, but actually becomes sort of emotionally intense by the end, and there are some beautiful melodies in the middle eight('I don't know if I can hold on') and the 'then will there be no time' sections. But the a lot of the lyrics are just so dated with pop culture references. But then maybe that actually fits, since the song is kind of about the fleeting nature of success in pop culture.
If You Wear That Velvet Dress is an exceedingly atmospheric, captivating, and sexy ballad, delivered in that smokey 90s Bono voice. I just wish that vocal had been turned up a little in the mix because you can barely hear him until halfway through the song. Also have to mention the really nice, mellow guitar interlude in the middle. This track doesn't sound like anything else on the record, or anything else the band have ever done, really, but it's great.
Please. What can be said about Please that hasn't been said? It's one of their greatest songs, imo. Lyrically, it's political most of the way through, being about the troubles in Ireland, but then at the end - it might have still been intended to be political, but it also doubles as one of the most biting break-up lyrics I've ever seen - 'love is big/bigger than us/but love is not/what you're thinking of/it's what lovers deal/it's what lovers steal/you know I found it hard to receive/'cause you my love/I could never believe'. That will always be on my favorite lyrics that Bono ever wrote. Musically, Adam and Larry kind of own the song, with Edge kind playing a supporting role(until the end of the solo and live versions, obviously). The rhythm section is hypnotizing here, verging on jazzy, and I know a lot of people don't care for the single version because a lot of that is missing from it. I love all versions of the track. The album version is really intimate, and you can really feel the smoldering anger underneath it all; it's grittier, and it's also the only version that has that Edge backing vocal at the end that I love. The full-band live version, however, is considered by many as one of the greatest things the band has ever done, and rightly so. It's a fucking tour-de-force, from the band's performance, to Bono's performance to Bono and Edge singing together to Edge's solo to the quiet finish after the explosion. There is a reason Please is my holy grail of songs I've never seen performed in person.
Wake Up Dead Man is one of the darkest songs the band ever wrote. It's heavy, musically and lyrically. Musically, the song combines quiet vocals with heavy, succinct guitar riffs in the chorus until halfway through when the song picks up pace. Lyrically, it is a midnight of the soul, a crisis of faith, a breakdown. There is such anger there, especially in the first verse and chorus, both quiet anger and loud anger(the riff). It's riveting stuff, and one of the band's greatest album closers. IMO, only Love is Blindness definitively tops it, while others come close(The Troubles, Mothers Of The Disappeared, 40).
It is a flawed, and it's not for everyone, but for some, it is a powerful record, and one that stands in stark contrast stylistically, sonically, and spiritually to much of what came after. For some, it was a misstep, but for many others, this record marks the the end of 'old u2', a kind of last stand. In 1989, at one of the last Lovetown shows, Bono famously said 'this is just the end of something for U2'. He could've just as well said the same thing at one of the last Popmart shows. Months after the tour wrapped, the first Best Of was released and their VH1 Legends episode aired, the following year the classic albums documentary about the Joshua Tree was released, and the year after that they released the back-to-basics All That You Can't Leave Behind. The commercial and critical success that they had started to take for granted had been threatened with Pop and it seems like the band reacted to that. In the last fifteen years, after the Elevation tour, they've barely acknowledged the record.
But we can. Happy 20th, Pop.
