This is my concerned face, Niceman.
Always love Corie's quirky comments.
Discotheque wasn't the problem (they could have survived that video if not for the insincere tour itself).
But wasn't insincerity kind of a hallmark of ZOO TV as much as it was Popmart? We all know that a major motivating force behind the bands thinking in the early 90's was about trying to dismantle that overly-earnest image they'd got saddled with and proving to the audience that everything they knew was wrong. All of Bono's characters; The Fly, Mirrorball Man and MacPhisto were all performed with one giant wink weren't they? People knew the band had lightened up and enjoyed the ride.
As strange as this may sound I still feel that Popmart was actually a lot less frivolous than ZOO TV. The latter was more about the shiny surface, whereas the former had far more substance. Popmart also felt warmer, not as aloof or smart-arse as ZOO TV had been. For me, those performances of Please in particular, had far more emotional weight and dramatic punch than practically the whole of the ZOOTV set, even surpassing something like Love is Blindness.
I agree with JamesU2 though in that visually Popmart had all sorts of problems.
For one, the set-design just left people perplexed. They saw that massive yellow arch and the lemon and rapidly (and quite understandably) drew the conclusion that U2 had simply fallen victim to overblown whimsy. The whole concept just didn't really chime with the times either. The frenetic, multi-media onslaught of ZOOTV caught the mood of the moment perfectly, people immediately got what they were trying to do. Popmart by contrast had a much blunter point, it appeared to be reaching for a number of themes without saying anything definitive about any of them.
As mentioned above, the band looked very odd during this period too, and not in a good way. The U2 of AB/ZOOTV looked a hell of a lot cooler, they were leaner, sleeker and, crucially, sexier than they'd ever been before. The Popmart get-up saw a complete reversal in all this, those outfits just did not complement the guys at all, only Larry emerged with any dignity (by looking pretty much exactly the same as he does every tour).
Say what you will about ATYCLB/Elevation, but the band rediscovered some of their sex appeal in the early 00's, out when the gaudy costumes and in came something a lot simpler but also much sharper.
Incidentally, although I've criticised the look of the band in the late 90's, I do appreciate their willingess to try out something new. It backfired sure, but I'd rather them attempt to keep evolving rather than stick rigidly to the same visual style in the way that they've done throughout this decade. Apart from Bono's changing haircut, there's pretty much no development at all in the bands look from 2000-2010. This could be another reason for NLOTH's lack of impact. Not only do the band sound the same, they
look exactly the same too. This is certainly something the band of the 90's would have avoided doing.