Here's an update of song interpretations for POP from
Threesunrises.net -- U2 Song Meanings and wikipedia:
Discotheque
[...], but there doesn't appear to be too much sleight of hand at work on Pop's initial calling card: "You just can't get enough of that lovey dovey stuff." It's about drugs, right?
"No," says Bono, "I think it's an earnest little riddle about love. That's the funny thing. We had to trash it up in the video, camp it up, to get people off the fact that it's a f---in' Paul McCartney song. Y'know, implication, it's about the counterfeit of what you can't find. People take second best because it's hard to get the real shit."
Exactly. So you're sure it's not about drugs?
The Edge: "Hahahaha! It's about drugs as well."
Bono: "Yeah, that's one of them, but it's not just drugs. There's lots of counterfeits out there."
"Ornithology."
"What's that?" Bono looks over to Adam Clayton, now sprawled on the sofa and hitherto contemplating an early afternoon snooze.
"Ornithology," the bassman repeats.
Bono shakes his head. "Ornithology. Tell them Adam went down in the third round. He's had one word to contribute and it's 'ornithology!' "
"Well," Clayton protests, "you'll be on to football next!"
(from " '...Only Now We Look Cool' " by Keith Cameron, New Musical Express, March 08, 1997)
Do you feel loved
Do You Feel Loved: "may be a smart thing to say to a lover -- but it's an even smarter one to put to 50,000 people in an open air arena." ... "It's quite a question," Bono says, "but there's no question mark on it. We took the '?' off because we thought it was a bit heavy with the '?'."
(from "Into The Heart" by Niall Stokes)
MOFO
His [Bono] conversation shoots off down unexpected alleyways. Discussing one of the album's stand-out tracks, "Mofo," a wailing techno-blues for an absent mother, he'll suddenly launch into an animated flight of fancy. "We should have called it 'Oedipussy,'" he'll declare, laughing. "Maybe I could sing it hanging from a giant umbilical cord."
There is, however, darkness lurking behind the humour. Bono's mother died when he was 14 and he has long recognised that this was a defining moment in his life, pushing him in two directions at once: towards his profound faith in God and towards rock and roll. The prevailing wisdom is that the devil has all the best tunes. Yet three members of U2 (Bono, Edge and Larry) have been devout Christians since their teens. Although they avoid preaching or crusading, their spiritual faith infuses their music.
It could even be argued that the tension between their Christian values and the very primal, sexual and usually hedonistic nature of their chosen art form lies at the very heart of U2's creativity. As Bono sings on "Mofo," he has been, "Lookin' for to save my soul / Lookin' for to fill that GOD shaped hole."
"Everyone's got one," he says. "Some are blacker and wider than others. It goes right back to the blues. It's what first makes you want to shout at God, when you've been abandoned or someone's been taken away from you. And I don't think you ever fill it, not completely. You can fill it up with time, by living a full life, but, if you're silent enough, you can still hear the hissing."
(from "Growing Up With U2" by Neil McCormick, The Daily Telegraph, January 01, 1997)
Bono is practically drowning in "Mofo." In one verse -- "Lookin' for a sound that's gonna drown out the world / Lookin' for the father of my two little girls" -- he's caught in the grip of contradiction between total rock-star retreat and his real-life obligations as a husband (Bono met his wife, Ali, in high school, around the same time that the band formed) and the father of two young daughters.
In another part of the song, he addresses his late mother, Iris, who died following a brain hemorrhage when Bono -- then just Paul Hewson -- was 14: "Mother, am I still your son? You know I've waited for so long to hear you say so... Now I'm still a child, but no one tells me no."
After Pop came out, Bono explains, smiling, a bunch of his friends left messages on his answering machine, just saying, "No! No!"
"I stumbled into it," he says, a bit shyly, of the autobiographical core of "Mofo." "Lines jump out, bits and pieces come up. Then you put the puzzle together.
"It's all the same thing, really," he continues intensely. "People looking up on the mountain for light, going to ashrams or churches on Sunday or taking drugs. I think it's in the ordinary things, in the trash you're throwing away, commerce, all this stuff. Go through it; find out what's on your mind. Look at the hole in your heart."
Bono draws a heart in the air, then pokes out a circle in the middle with his finger. "I can actually make a shape of it more than I can tell you about it," he says.
(from "The Wizards Of Pop" by David Fricke, Rolling Stone, May 29, 1997)
"Mofo", for instance, is a blistering, pulsating, industrial-techno tour de force that demands attention with a daring sound that's miles -- and genres -- removed from The Joshua Tree's stadium-ready anthems. The chaotic song's strength, though, is in the lyrics, which are among the most personal and revealing Bono, 37, has ever written for public consumption.
"Mother, am I still your son?
You know I've waited so long to hear you say so
Mother you left and made me someone
Now I'm still a child, but no one tells me no"
"It's a very desperate lyric," says Bono, whose mother died when he was still in his teens. "But (the song) has a bit of swagger to it to sweeten the pill. It's about the reason why I'm in a band -- and why a lot of people who I meet have taken up electric guitar or whatever it is. There is a hole that you're attempting to fill as a painter, or a filmmaker or a shouter in a rock group, and that's how you turn the pain of what's happened to you in your life into some kind of blessing.
"When I see Michael Jackson singing, I can see that," he continues. "From John Lennon to John Lydon -- there's hundreds of them who lost their mothers. So the nipple of rock 'n' roll is a replacement. Basically, these people -- including myself -- are throwing tantrums for a living because their mothers abandoned them. It goes back to the blues: Sometimes I feel like a motherless child."
(from "U2 puts on glitz, without old sales Pop" by J. Freedom du Lac, The Sacramento Bee, June 15, 1997)
[Bono:] "That song 'Mofo' is hardcore. If I could put my whole life into one song, it'd be something close to that."
(from the PopMart Tourbook, 1997)
Bono: "Well Mofo is off the map of raw and it is a shame no one can hear the lyrics because it is a very heavy thing 'looking for the save my, save my soul, looking in the places where no flowers grow, looking for the .............. That is a wild one, I still cannot get over that song. I know it is a bit long on pop and you cannot really hear the words. It takes the cliché motherfucker and turns it into this Oedipal idea." [...]
(from "11 reasons to leave home", Iafrica.com, 200(?))
If god will send his angels
Slow-winding ballad constructed around a title that existed during Zooropa sessions. Bono: "It's this guy beating up his girlfriend about her searching for answers and just telling her to look around. It's like science fiction gospel. Edge is calling it country hip-hop."
(from "Pop, Pop, Pop Music -- U2's New Album, Track by Track", Q Magazine, March 1997)
Staring at the sun
The song was written with the line "Stuck together with God's glue," which was taken directly from the title of the album by the Irish band Something Happens, who are good friends with U2.
Last night on earth
"Last Night on Earth" was written during the Pop sessions, which took place from late 1996 to early 1997. Assuming they had plenty of time to finish recording the songs for the album, the band told manager Paul McGuinness to go ahead and book their PopMart Tour, which was to begin in later April 1997. As time got closer and closer to the start of the tour, the band began running out of time to finish recording the album, which was to be released that March. The band immediately regretted their decision to let McGuinness book the tour, and had to rush their recording sessions to release the album in time. "Last Night on Earth" was one of the last songs to be recorded for the album. As the band and their associates had been working up until the last minute to finish recording and mixing the album, Bono did not come up with the song's chorus until four o'clock in the morning during the last night in the studio. After being up all night long, Bono began singing the line "You've got to give it away," and decided to use it as part of the song's chorus. Once the chorus has been written, it needed to be recorded immediately, however Bono had completely lost his voice at the time, so echos were added to his voice, as well as backing vocals by The Edge.
Gone
"During the '80s, it was almost as if we had to say sorry for being in a big band," Bono said to me, somewhere in the middle of recording U2's official follow-up to Zooropa.
"That whole indie thing is such a con. We were supposed to feel guilty about the fact that we'd been successful. But that was what we wanted, right from the start: to be one of the biggest bands in the world."
The band were in the middle of recording a song called "Gone" at the time. Bono described it as a defiant gesture, a fuck-you to the begrudgers. It was about being in a successful band and enjoying it. That spirit was in the air -- and it sparked a potential title for the new record.
(from "The History Of Pop" by Niall Stokes, Hot Press, March 19, 1997)
"I see a lot of light in those songs," maintains Bono, who shares co-writing credit with the Edge for the lyrics on Pop. "["Gone"] started out as quite defiant. But at some point in the song, something else happens. I know. I remember writing the thing down and going, 'Why do I feel like this?' That is why I find it hard to talk about songs. I'm in them."
(from "The Wizards Of Pop" by David Fricke, Rolling Stone, May 29, 1997)
MAX: In the song "Gone" from the new album there is the line "What you leave behind, you don't miss anyway." But you are notorious for leaving everything behind.
Bono: Hahaha. You've done your research. This is true and maybe that is because I never felt any attachment with things. I used to eat Larry's lunch and sleep in Edge's house. Even when I had no money, I always felt rich. Obviously in this song I am talking about the past. You know people complain about being rock & roll stars, you hear them all the time these spoiled pop-stars, how hard it is. From the moment Larry asked me to be in this band it's just been a big adventure and when "Gone" was written I felt like it was almost the last song ever for us. But that was what I was feeling that day. What I wanted to say, it was fantastic, I loved all of this, even the bullshit, I enjoyed it all, so I could loose that too.
(from an interview by Florian Brugger, MAX Magazine, 1997)
I personally read the POP tour book and it mentioned that the song was about leaving your family behind to go on tour as well.
Miami
While we're still in our Hawaiian shirts, what's behind the "Miami, my mammy" line? Are we talking about a serious Oedipal complex here?
Bono: "Al Jolson was down there! I dunno, it's just the humour of it. That's one bad mother, Miami (laughs). I could have said Miami, my granny, but I don't think it would've had the same force, somehow! Or 'nanny' would've done.
(from "The History Of Pop" by Niall Stokes, Hot Press, March 19, 1997)
Where do the "lighter" songs on Pop come from -- "Miami" or "Playboy Mansion"?
[Edge:] There's a lot of irony in those songs, but also a genuine sort of appreciation of some of things that are talked about. "Miami" is like a little postcard, a few mad nights out in a very mad town. There are characters involved that are fictitious, but the general picture it paints is of a very fascinating and very crazy place we spent a couple of weeks in the midst of making the album. Everything we set out to do during that visit we failed to do, but what we came away with was a song. It's the accidents that often are the most valuable things.
(from "In Excess" by Gary Graff, Guitar World, September 01, 1997)
The playboy mansion
There were, for instance, the Lotto Balls, a stunt Bono wanted to use in the show during the Pop tune "The Playboy Mansion." "It's a lotto song, faith vs. chance, prosperity vs. peace," he explains. "And we were trying to get these huge balls -- I researched this -- with little projectors in them. People could push them over their heads. But I'd be projected on them, singing. I was just gone on that." The expense, however, was prohibitive. "I think we're still working on a lesser version," he says, ever hopeful.
(from "The Wizards Of Pop" by David Fricke, Rolling Stone, May 29, 1997)
The release of Achtung Baby (1991) and Zooropa (1993), and the accompanying Zoo TV multi-media tour, signalled U2's intention to explore serious themes of human communication and meaning, but not in a serious way.
The Pop album and PopMart tour takes the idea a step further. Both attack the empty values of modern life by pretending to embrace them. The PopMart stage will be decorated with kitsch and corporate symbols, including a 30-metre Golden Arch, a 10-metre high mirror ball shaped like a lemon and a glowing giant.
The use of the Golden Arch seems particularly potent: in a secular society, the ubiquitous symbol of McDonald's Restaurants arguably means more to North Americans than does the Crucifix, the symbol of Christ on the Cross.
"Well, you're right," Bono agrees. "There's whole new symbols: corporate logos have taken on almost religious iconography.
"In 'The Playboy Mansion' (a song on Pop), it's about when people mistake prosperity for peace, and for spiritual life. That's where we live, although I'm trying in the song not to be too condescending about it."
(from "U2 Deconstructs Rock" by Peter Howell, Toronto Star, February 1997)
{Edge:] As for "Playboy Mansion," it's a pop anthem, I suppose. It's kind of ironic. I hope it's not cynical. It's definitely tongue in cheek; it's really just a celebration of some of the sort of lighter, sillier things and at the same time maybe pointing out or at least shedding some light on where we're at, sort of the contradictions and funny aspects of life in 1997.
(from "In Excess" by Gary Graff, Guitar World, September 01, 1997)
If you wear that velvet dress
During the Pop sessions, it was initially not intended to be included on the album but was planned as a B-Side for the "Discothèque" single. Adam Clayton and producer Howie B revised it in the final days before the single's release so it could be included on the album.
Please
Q: You seem as earnest as you ever were. And even though the tone of Pop is bleak, there's still this underlying optimism. Is there an effort on your part to shade the earnestness and not overtly pound your chest?
A: [Bono:] I've gotten smarter about how to take on a subject. I mean, "Please" (from Pop) is "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in another way, and it draws from the same palette of problems. It's just much more personal because it's about two people... As far as the religion thing goes, I often think religion is what happens when God has left the building, really... I would aspire to be a Christian, if I could... (smiles). When rock stars open their mouths and mystic thoughts flop out, it's generally time to put on the headphones!
(from "The Elder Lemon", Sunday Tribune Magazine (Ireland), June 29, 1997)
Wake up dead man
As for "Wake Up Dead Man," Bono said, "To me, the song goes back to the idea of David being the first blues singer, and the first man on record to shout at God in this angry fashion. There are a lot of people who feel that if there is a God, then roll him out because they've got some questions to ask. It's a very angry song."
(from "Bono Explains It All For You" by Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times, 1997)
That high pitched riff, one of Edges best. 
)
