Just got pop

[bread n' whine]

I agree, Gone would be my favorite song on the album if the three above it werent there. The sample at the beginning really sounds like one of those repeated bits in My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.

I hope you didnt read my post as insulting Pop. I really love Pop, I wouldnt change anything about its imperfection, I just love it more for what it does than for how it sounds. I couldnt live with myself if I said it was the best music U2 was capable of. Even a song as good as "Please" would really bore me without the lyrics being what they are. And I'm not easily bored by atmospheric stuff.

 

[Jack In The Box]

you're a good person

and no, that's no the best music U2 is capable to do, but indeed the most interesting music they and a lot of other bands are capable to do

Please (mostly single version) has great arrangements, and it's a great tune itself, very dramatic

Pop isn't underrated precisely, it's just misunderstood

 

[Earnie Shavers]

Pop isn't underrated precisely, it's just misunderstood

Exactly. That's a combo of their own faults (in it's prerelease image and hype - this whole dance/techno album thing) and just people really trying to hear something that simply isn't there and isn't really meant to be there.

 

[bread n' whine]

I dont think it's misunderstood at all. People seem to get what it's about, which isnt surprising given how obvious it is.

Mirroring what the band themselves think of it these days, some people don't like it at all. But they get it.

The only people in my experience who don't seem to get it are a small breed of very fundamentalist Christians who write website entries talking about how songs like "Vertigo" and "Elevation" are evidence of U2 finding their way back to the lord after the "let's all have sex and make money" attitude they promoted in their '90s work.

But leave it to those people never to get anything. Or maybe they do get it, they just arent telling their readers the full story. The lyrics of Pop, when they were clearly in favor of something, weren't big on making money, actually, or on power. Most American Christians with any influence seem to be more comfortable with those than with anything else. You can see why Pop would turn their "Christian" sensibilities off. If it was gonna use the f word in a prayer to God, couldn't it at least have the decency to use it about gays or abortionists or something?

 

[Ellay]

Boom Cha

 

[Earnie Shavers]

No, I think it is misunderstood by a lot of people. A lot 'get it' and don't like it for sure, and that's cool, but there are definitely a lot who pass it off by it's reputation - and it's reputation is genuinely way off base. That's what I mean by misunderstood, and that's only a tiny % in these forums, but a pretty big % outside of these forums.

 

[bread n' whine]

To some extent didnt U2 intentionally create that reputation though, by talking about how different ATYCLB was, by promoting it as a "back to the roots"? If there hadnt been anything wrong with the furthest branches (i.e. Pop) there would have been no need to go back to the roots. The press and entertainment-industrial-complex always loves a good opportunity to prove you need to go out and spend money on the new U2 [insert any big name] album, and they often enjoy knocking down the previous one and talking about the massive improvement from there as incentive... even if they "loved" the previous one for similar reasons when it came out.

U2 handed them this opportunity on a platter. Notice how low ATYCLB's reputation is these days, including outside U2 fanworld. That was amazing to me as it was the most overhyped, overpraised album I had ever encountered to that point. Yet now it's almost underrated, by everyone.

It just confirmed my view of how the press does this, denigrating all past work even when it's very similar and blatantly superior (ATYCLB>HTDAAB, not that either is a masterpiece). And so long as The Joshua Tree's reputation can remain intact, this band seems willing to play along brilliantly. Lower back catalog sales must be sacrificed for new product!

 

[*sofia*]

Pop is great, definitely one of my absolute favourites of all time!
i think ATYCLB is great too, because that "back to basics" thing was well-earned, i think, after those three very experimenting records.. (but all of them awesome, to my opinion, AB is a classic)ATYCLB is so fresh, it's a great record to listen to when you're on the road. but HTDAAB is missing something. i don't really know what it is but it's something..
to protect this thread from turning into a HTDAAB-thread, a question: What's the deal with U2 re-recording POP??

 

[bread n' whine]

It's a horrible idea. That album would cease to have any meaning if re-recorded by today's U2. unless they made the lyrics all uplifting. which would be far worse.