Pop 25th Anniversary Thread... What do you want?

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The Panther said:
It's just a different attitude to safeguarding your commercial standing in the industry as you get older.

U2 in 1981 with a cheesy pop-melody like "Pete The Chop":
"This is really cheesy, and sounds like A Flock Of Seagulls or something. Let's bury it. If our manager begs us, we'll put it out as a B-side and let it die there..."

U2 in 2000 with a cheesy pop-melody like "Stuck in a Moment...":
"This is awesome and we need to record is as slickly as possible, release it as an A-side, and promote the hell out of it if we want to compete with Britney Spears!"

.
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this is an absurd take.
 
Indeed. “Stuck” is their second most indelible, instantly memorable melody, and is widely beloved. The lyrics are smart and tough, and the song has endured over 20 years, and will for another 20.

There are many examples of U2 trying to write a pop song to be popular with the youngs.

“Stuck” is not one of them. “Stuck” is an all-time U2 classic. Maybe not quite a consensus top 10, but definitely a Top 20.

I’m sorry, and I dont know who needs to hear this, but claiming to only like “experimental U2” is not a personality.
 
Irvine511 said:
Indeed. “Stuck” is their second most indelible, instantly memorable melody, and is widely beloved. The lyrics are smart and tough, and the song has endured over 20 years, and will for another 20.

There are many examples of U2 trying to write a pop song to be popular with the youngs.

“Stuck” is not one of them. “Stuck” is an all-time U2 classic. Maybe not quite a consensus top 10, but definitely a Top 20.

I’m sorry, and I dont know who needs to hear this, but claiming to only like “experimental U2” is not a personality.
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Absolutely agree. “Stuck” is pop in the same way that Paul Simon and The Beatles are pop - sturdy songwriting, reliable melody, personal theme rendered universal.
 
It goes without saying that if someone doesn’t personally like “Stuck,” that’s fine! Some people don’t like “One” either! People have their tastes! The song is a big sheep dog licking your face! That can be annoying!

But if you are to take a big picture look at what are the most popular U2 songs, and the songs that they continue to play, this one is way up there.
 
womanfish said:
In the big scheme of things, nothing ever really sounds like U2 on the radio. They've never really fit in, and as it's been said, they really are sort of a genre unto their own.
Yes, Eno/Lanois really helped the overall atmosphere of the album, and there are some great songs, Kite being in my top 10 U2 songs ever. But it has some really bad songs, and some just very middle of the road songs.
And yes, while they went "back to the basics" there were definitely some new touches in there to keep things interesting.

I do think that if they had done All That and Bomb, and then No Line was actually the album that they set out to make, I would probably view it all differently. If they had done the back to basics and then straight rockish albums, and then followed up with a more fully atmospheric, experimental No Line, I could live with that a lot better.
It's truly hard to quantify just how much SUC and Crazy Tonight and Boots to a slightly lesser extent, fucked up what was a incredible trajectory for the band (in terms of public perception)
People were really anticipating this album, and to think that Boots accompanied by its horrible video, hit number 10 on the charts, one can only imagine what a Magnificent or No Line On the Horizon would have done.
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I'm definitely in the camp of wishing No Line was the album they initially intended (I have similar feelings on SOE), but I always felt like even if you take out the middle three songs (I never minded Boots), you're not left with a great album. I know it boils down to personal taste, but I would never say NLOTH as a song had any single potential (ver2 was always my preference for the more unique/experimental sounds being brought more into focus, but still not a single). I can't stand how much Bono is yelling/shouting at us in the beginning of the album in general. MOS is a tedious seven and a half minutes because of it.

I don't know how long that trajectory could have lasted though if it had really had taken off, either way. I don't think we'd have gotten much more out of it; probably just would have seen SOA as a fairly quick follow-up/sister-album and then they'd have still moved onto AB20 celebrations shortly after. Just speculation, of course.

I'm also aware this is now a huge digression on a celebration of POP thread. Someone help us segue back!
 
I didn't say I don't like "Stuck in a Moment". (As it happens, I think it's fine.) What I said was, the band's attitude towards such melodies and potentially-commercial tunes was different when they were older.
 
I am strongly in the camp that Pop was U2's last great adventure. I could never say it better than Stereogum's article, Pop at 20 in 2017 which sums it all up perfectly. An epic piece of music journalism:

https://www.stereogum.com/1927982/pop-turns-20/reviews/the-anniversary/

The last three paragraphs sums it up, with end emphasis added by me.

In the ’90s, U2 had the willingness to fall on their faces, even if that willingness was calculated. Today, they seem oblivious — it takes a lack of awareness to think that, hey, dropping Songs of Innocence onto everyone’s iPhones might not result in a resounding chorus of hallelujahs. But they are also cripplingly self-aware, always heavily criticizing themselves a few breaths away from self-aggrandizing. This is part of Pop’s lasting damage, that it retroactively diminishes the standing of ’90s U2 as a whole — if this is what it was all leading to, surely the thinking that preceded it was also folly, right?

“The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear,” Bono sings on “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,” one of the hit single attempts that marred No Line On The Horizon. By 2009, that was a cringe-inducing line from him: The version of the band we had now was the hammy, classic rock kind of ridiculous. A safe ridiculous. But throughout the years, U2 did have a sense of the absurdity of what they were doing: as much as they were true believers in the transcendent properties of pop music, they also poked fun at themselves for the patent ridiculousness of getting up onstage and being a rock band.

This is the version of U2 that’s missed after Pop. The guys who admitted this whole thing was a bit of a farce, but actually acted on it, too — the guys who were willing to take some chances. The “ridiculous” line is laughable because all U2 wants to be now is “U2,” and they make creative decisions — now always long-gestating and overcooked in an attempt to marry the idea of the band with their idea of what could make the band as vital as they were twenty and thirty years ago. None of that is coming back. For those of us still (somehow) this invested in this band, it’s easy to keep wishing that U2 has one more great adventure in them — that they’d really go for it. They hedge their bets now. The turning point of Pop was that U2 made an album that would end their time as a band that innovated, and reimagined themselves, surprising us over and over. Ever since, they’ve been U2 as we expected them.
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That's kind of horse shit.

All That You Can't Leave Behind was a reimagination. It sounds nothing like anything they had done before, as much as critics like to point to it as a "back to basics" album. It doesn't sound like the Boy/October/War era, or the UF/JT/Rattle and Hum era, nor the Achtung/Zooropa/Pop era. It kind of borrows from all three, to sound familiar, yet is decidedly a different direction.

If you want to argue that from that point on they never reinvented themselves again, and/or went halfway and pussed out? You won't get an argument from me. But you can't just say U2 never transformed themselves after Pop just because you preferred the 90s U2.
 
ATYCLB is U2 flexing their collective muscle in the - gasp! - craft of songwriting. Christ, they’re boneheads
 
Unfortunately, albums aren't just about songwriting. Unless you're Dylan, who views recording them as a necessary evil to document the songs and usually doesn't overthink the production (unless he's persuaded to by someone like Lanois).

Albums at their best are also about the performance of that songwriting, and the creative choices in the way it's recorded. ATYCLB doesn't excel on the two latter fronts, and that's why it's subpar.
 
cobl04 said:
And ATYCLB is a great album :shrug: I prefer the U2 of Pop for sure, but for me ATYCLB is comfortably the best record they've put out since Pop.
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I know this is all opinion, but I think that SOI and No Line are both better than All That.

All that gave us Kite and I will forever be grateful. But it has as many bad songs on it as No Line, but without as many good ones to make up for it.

SOI is just stronger front to back. Sure it has no Kite, but EBW is up there with BD, Volcano with Elevation, and Raised by Wolves, Sleep Like a Baby, and The Troubles are better than any other songs on All That.

Then you have the shitty songs like Grace, POE and Wild Honey. SOI only has SFS and that's not so much shitty as just really meh.

Again, obviously my opinion, but I think I make a decent argument.
 
womanfish said:
I know this is all opinion, but I think that SOI and No Line are both better than All That.
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lazarus said:
Unfortunately, albums aren't just about songwriting.

Albums at their best are also about the performance of that songwriting, and the creative choices in the way it's recorded. ATYCLB doesn't excel on the two latter fronts, and that's why it's subpar.
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Amen x ♾

The seeds were planted earlier, but ATYCLB is where I personally see/hear (recorded) Bono fully diverting away from the rest of the band into the broad-scoped anthems-and-platitudes era. New York is musically very cool, for example, but I find it mostly unlistenable due to not only the lyrics, but also B’s delivery and performance.

For all of the hubbub about Pop not being finished, to me ATYCLB sounds and feels like an EP that’s been filled out with demos and half-baked ideas. This trickles over to Bomb as well.
 
lazarus said:
Unfortunately, albums aren't just about songwriting. Unless you're Dylan, who views recording them as a necessary evil to document the songs and usually doesn't overthink the production (unless he's persuaded to by someone like Lanois).

Albums at their best are also about the performance of that songwriting, and the creative choices in the way it's recorded. ATYCLB doesn't excel on the two latter fronts, and that's why it's subpar.
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Ohhhhh. My bad.
 
After all the stuff that went down with Pop: The recording, the promotion, and the touring, it only seems natural that U2 would take a different direction completely for their next album. Pop was the coda of yet another ridiculous decade in history. Pop does have more great songs than ATYCLB, but ATYCLB has some legendary songs like BD, Stuck, Walk On, and Kite. I enjoy all the songs on the album, but Grace is my least favorite. I have lots of strong memories in regard to ATYCLB, so it was will always be one of my favorite times in U2 history.
 
The first 7 tracks of ATYCLB are truly great. I'm a Wild Honey stan, and though it feels a little undercooked, the energy and uplift are pretty unique.

I bought Pop a few weeks after its release, so ATYCLB was my first lead up and release as a fan, so I listened to the absolute shit out of it. Despite that, I barely remember how most of those last four songs go.
 
IALW and WH are the Miami and Playboy Mansion of AttyCab.

IALW > Miami > WH >>> PM


(Grading Miami on a curve because it became a monster live and was crucial to Popmart)
 
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Those two songs on each album are the core of each, the songs closest to the original conception of what the Album was going to sound like.
 
Wild Honey is three minutes of solid, unforced fun. I'd take it over every song on HTDAAB and NLOTH, and most of SOI and SOE. I never got the hate for it.
 
U2 Best of 2000-2010

1. Wild Honey
2. Wild Honey
3. Wild Honey
4. Wild Honey
5. Wild Honey
6. Wild Honey
7. Electrical Storm
8. Wild Honey
9. Wild Honey
10. Wild Honey [with Electrical Storm (William Orbit Mix) as hidden track]
 
DeVaul said:
I’m here for the Wild Honey defense
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I like Wild Honey, and all I really said was that I think it’s better than Playboy Mansion.

What I do think is true is that the the closest each album comes to what was originally intended or inspired to be, is in those two core songs off each album: Miami and PM to Pop, and IALW and WH to ATYCLB.

It’s not that these are the best or worst songs on the album, it’s that they are the purest distillation of the spirit of each album.



As an aside, I’ll take WH a million times over its closest musical cousin, The Showman, which to me is god-awful.
 
Wild Honey isn't great, but I quite like the bridge and the chorus.


In a Little While, on the other hand, is a brilliant song. It just doesn't translate that well live and there's 100 songs I'd prefer to hear over it.
 
It's a fantastic song, although I do think it's a bummer the intro drums are canned.

Beautiful Day 10
Stuck in a Moment 10
Elevation 7
Walk On 10
Kite 10
In a Little While 9
Wild Honey 7
Peace on Earth 7
When I Look at the World 10
New York 9
Grace 8
The Ground Beneath Her Feet 10
 
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