Pop album - what went wrong..?

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corianderstem said:
No.
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When I recently got into Madonna, and I saw they both had 12 albums .I decided to sit down and compare album vs album. So pop matched up with her American life album. POP completely demolished it. Not only is it light years better but u2 had better dance beats. A experimental album for both and u2 ate Madonna's lunch. Although she pulled out a last second victory on the next round .Confession s on the dancefloor beat the interference's album of the century ATYCLB. Because "grace" stinks.
 
allbecauseofu2 said:
When I recently got into Madonna, and I saw they both had 12 albums .I decided to sit down and compare album vs album. So pop matched up with her American life album. POP completely demolished it. Not only is it light years better but u2 had better dance beats. A experimental album for both and u2 ate Madonna's lunch. Although she pulled out a last second victory on the next round .Confession s on the dancefloor beat the interference's album of the century ATYCLB. Because "grace" stinks.
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I'm glad we've confirmed U2's superiority to Madonna. I was staying up at night, worrying about that.

Any word yet on how they compare to One Direction?
 
Good. Cause one could stay up all night reading the 6,000 pop threads with same ideas over and over and over. Pop's underrated, its overrated, best album , worst album. Anyone got anything else? what you got to say buddy that's never been said about pop before? I'd rather try comparing pop to another artists album then vs another u2 album. Think that's pretty well taken care of by now. Im sorry you had mock my post instead of whatever you gonna say about pop. What you got to say? This is gonna be groundbreaking.
 
LemonMelon said:
I've been listening to Lemon a great deal lately and am utterly astounded by everything that happens in it. The bass line is arguably Adam's best, the vocal is spectacular, Edge's guitar tone...how the fuck did he come up with that? Where did that sense of adventure go after Pop? His guitar has never sounded anywhere near that dreamy or psychedelic since. He colors that track as skillfully as he did so much of TUF. Say what you want about his lack of technical prowess, but that song would be a shell of itself without him. And once you know the story behind the lyrics, they're heartbreaking.
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Lemon is a glorious song. I could write a dissertation on that song.

That's what U2 can do when they capture the magic and let it breathe.

21st century U2 would have wrecked Lemon. I am 99.9% sure of it.

Although they came close to some magic lately. Fez has a spirit about it. The title track, NLOTH. Kite was close. They aren't devoid of it, it just hasn't really sustained. Highly subjective I know. But as a songwriter, I know that if you keep banging on it for too long, you're gonna knock the magic out of it. I've done it myself to my own songs countless times. There's a soft middle, it's very easy to not get it right. I don't mean whether the song is good or not, I mean whether the song is the best version of itself. Giving it justice.

Unknown Caller was some unimaginative guitar work (think: intro but also the rest) and a lyrical clunker of a chorus from getting back into that realm. The feel of the song, the melody, the chorus, there was a possibility there.

UC was almost really special until it wasn't. So disappointing. I can imagine an earlier version of that song - a version where Edge had gambled and played something really interesting (before second guessing himself)...a version where Bono wrote something without the techy gimmickry. Although maybe nothing like that ever existed. But I like imagining that it did. The version that was in the trailer for the Lanois film sounded more overtly 'religious' (for lack of a better term) but even as a non-religious person, that's fine.

I wouldn't even mind if they made a full blown modern gospel album. They can do that shit well. It's where they try to be too clever when it doesn't work. And with Lemon I don't think they had time to do anything other than precisely what they did. Maybe we could say that for that whole album. Wonderful album. Tremendous song, to the core. "Heartbreaking" is a good word for the subject matter of the song. Love love love it.
 
The Panther said:
I'm glad we've confirmed U2's superiority to Madonna. I was staying up at night, worrying about that. Any word yet on how they compare to One Direction?
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While Madonna and U2 do very different things, they do merit lots of comparisons

And don't ever compare Madonna to a boy bad like One Direction. She's genuinely changed the culture (more profoundly than U2), and she's who most female pop singers want to be.

The Cyrus fiasco, however, is symptomatic of the still heavy influence of Madonna, who sprang to world fame in the 1980s with sophisticated videos that were suffused with a daring European art-film eroticism and that were arguably among the best artworks of the decade. Madonna’s provocations were smolderingly sexy because she had a good Catholic girl’s keen sense of transgression. Subversion requires limits to violate.

Young performers will probably never equal or surpass the genuine shocks delivered by the young Madonna, as when she sensually rolled around in a lacy wedding dress and thumped her chest with the mic while singing “Like a Virgin” at the first MTV awards show in 1984. Her influence was massive and profound, on a global scale.

But more important, Madonna, a trained modern dancer, was originally inspired by work of tremendous quality — above all, Marlene Dietrich’s glamorous movie roles as a bisexual blond dominatrix and Bob Fosse’s stunningly forceful strip-club choreography for the 1972 film Cabaret, set in decadent Weimar-era Berlin. Today’s aspiring singers, teethed on frenetically edited small-screen videos, rarely have direct contact with those superb precursors and are simply aping feeble imitations of Madonna at 10th remove.

http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/27/pops-drop-from-madonna-to-miley/
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No one has to like her music (though she's written some of the most effortless, exhilarating pop songs ever) but she's one of the most influential figures of the past 30 years. And having been to a concert, she genuinely tried to push the artistic envelope by juxtaposing shocking violence with religious imagery, genuinely innovative art design, and a constant desire to sound fresh with each album. In that way, she and U2 are peers -- they are the only 80s mega acts still pushing forward (and pissing off parts of ther audience ... She plays even fewer of the war horses than U2).
 
Irvine511 said:
While Madonna and U2 do very different things, they do merit lots of comparisons

And don't ever compare Madonna to a boy bad like One Direction. She's genuinely changed the culture (more profoundly than U2), and she's who most female pop singers want to be.

No one has to like her music (though she's written some of the most effortless, exhilarating pop songs ever) but she's one of the most influential figures of the past 30 years. And having been to a concert, she genuinely tried to push the artistic envelope by juxtaposing shocking violence with religious imagery, genuinely innovative art design, and a constant desire to sound fresh with each album. In that way, she and U2 are peers -- they are the only 80s mega acts still pushing forward (and pissing off parts of ther audience ... She plays even fewer of the war horses than U2).
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Agree w/all of this. I've never been a big fan of Madonna's music (though I think Like a Prayer is fantastic), but I have a tremendous amount of respect for her as an artist. She's actually pushed the envelope, and defined her genre, is a way that U2 never is. Every female pop artist, directly or indirectly, owes her a debt...and if someone is doing it, she probably did it first. And as you point out, she's even less of a legacy act than U2 has. For better or worse, she constantly reinvents herself and each reinvention sparks imitation. Pretty impressive actually. So yeah, in many ways the comparisons are apt.

Having said that, again I'm not a fan of her music in general, and in the past few years I think she's lost it a little bit, and I do believe the sun is finally starting to set on her relevance...and she's letting go of it with not much grace.
 
See, its REM that used to be u2's peer. Like it was the sister band to u2 in some ways. And that was true. But in 2013 not at all. For one , rem retired. Rem was a cult act that became big in the middle of their career and then went back to being a cult act. They didn't have to deal with what u2 and Madonna are dealing with. One difference , it feels like Madonna secretly wants all this younger acts to burn out. So it makes her look better. She wants lady gaga to become a cult act so shes out of the way. U2's not waiting for coldplay to collapse so they can run then out of town.
 
Sr. Poop really likes this album
Sr. Poop was surprised to see how many other songs U2 sampled on it
 
What an awesome photo, thanks for sharing that.

Oh, and sorry for stealing your avatar haha, I'll find something else.
 
I recently came across a Steregum article ranking U2's albums from worst to best(this isn't going where you think it's going). Pop was ranked #7, but what caught my attention was one of the comments in the comments section. Now, I know it's in the internet and people can type anything, but if the person is telling the truth, I find it pretty interesting:

A few years back, in DC (during the ‘Vertigo Tour’) – I had the chance to chat with Bono a bit before his show. I had the chance to ask him why “Pop (the album) gets slagged off so much” … he went on for a bit about it wasn’t as polished, etc etc… [I'm paraphrasing a bit here] then I said to him – but that’s what gave “your electronic album” a degree a humanity that would have been completely absent…

then Bono’s mouth dropped in a total sense of shock, put his hands on my shoulders – stared me dead in the eye said “oh my God, you HAVE to tell the Edge that. I’m not sure if he’s going to come by now, but tell him exactly what you told me”

… there’s a bit more to the story, but I did get to see Bono doing a SPOT ON Monty Python Impression (the ‘blessed are the cheesemarkers part in “the Life of Brian”) – and I was invited to the ‘after party’ that was at his hotel.

…what was nuts about the ‘after party’ (after the concert) was how much Bono remembered about specific performances from tours (and well, how much he clearly didn’t want to do the Bono-schtick with the ‘movers and shakers’ at this other event). He asked what shows I’ve seen before, one of them was Baltimore (on the ATYCLB Tour) – as soon as I mentioned that show, he was like “oh yea, we played a different version of “Please” then)…

this went on through the night, until I was like OK – I have to leave now, before I say something stupid.
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The part that caught my attention was the underlined. We always talk about how the band always puts Pop down and the band never plays anything from Pop and the band seems like it's disowning the album sometimes. But if this conversation really occurred, it makes it seem like maybe the band isn't of a unified mind about the album. Like maybe Bono doesn't have such a problem with Pop and it's Edge who really has the issue with it.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Or maybe it's not even real.

But I thought it was interesting. The idea that maybe there is internal division in the band about the album.
 
I think they don't play it simply because they still don't know how to. I'm no musician, so my opinion is really worthless, but I have no idea how they can't figure out an amazing live version of Discotheque. It seems like all the parts are just sitting there, and I don't really get why it's so hard for them to put it back together. It feels so obvious, even if I don't know how.

In regards to the 'degree of humanity' line, that's absolutely true. I think it's great that the opening line to the whole album is "You can reach, but you can't grab it". Sets you off perfectly not only on the lyrical theme of the album, but also the whole creation of it.

I love the fucking thing. Wouldn't change any of it.
 
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