Pop themes

[jeevey]

I thought the fascinating conversation about Pop over in the new album discussion deserved a place of its own. I'm placing it in this forum rather than in lyrics discussion because I think that particularly with Pop, the sound of the songs has an important part in forming the sense of the record. Here are a few of the competing assertions we've seen:

Pop is a great record
Pop sucks donkey balls.
Pop is a terrible album lyrically.
Pop contains some of Bono's most moving lyrics.
Pop deals with loss of faith.
No it doesn't, because Bono never lost his faith.
Pop is erratic and lacks cohesion.
No, it's thematically and sonically very cohesive.
Production is terrible.
It's okay.

Some further questions:

Who is the "her" of WUDM?
How can we describe the emotional experience of the record? Is it loss of faith or something else, and do we need to consider Bono's personal experience to answer this question?
Is the production of the record just terrible, or does it sound that way for a reason?
Do all the songs contribute to a thematic or emotional unity in the record or are some disconnected?
Is Please an encouraging song, and IYWTVD a comforting one? Is Playboy Mansion shallow?

And so on.

 

[jeevey]

This record generally gets terrible marks for production. But I personally think that the muddy and tortured sound of the record is a sonic reflection of its themes.

What if the band, having made this emotionally difficult record, didn't want it to be pretty and easy to listen to? What if clarity in the sound would have been counterproductive to the desired effect of the songs? Is it possible that they made it like that on purpose? Or... maybe it was inadvertent, but still contributes to the overall cohesion.

 

[cobl04]

I think Pop is a coherent narrative about trying to fill a spiritual void through material hedonism. Really the ramshackle/unfinished feel of some of the songs complements that theme perfectly, as though the sheen on top is not enough to conceal the unraveling underneath.

 

[Vlaco]

Pop sucks donkey balls.

Only in South America.

p.s. Pop was huge there too.

 

[digitize]

I think Pop is a coherent narrative about trying to fill a spiritual void through material hedonism. Really the ramshackle/unfinished feel of some of the songs complements that theme perfectly, as though the sheen on top is not enough to conceal the unraveling underneath.

Sounds about right to me.

 

[OpenG180]

Songs of Faith and Love in the Dawn of a New Era.

And one of the best (if not the best) design and artwork of any U2 record.

 

[mama cass]

i think POP is up there with JT and AB as one of U2's most complete albums

also, it never grows old for me, and never makes me wince

 

[AcrobatU2Pop]

i think POP is up there with JT and AB as one of U2's most complete albums

also, it never grows old for me, and never makes me wince

Agreed. I'll never forget my first listen and just being blown away. I'm still blown away 16 years later.

If I was capable of time travel, I would spend weeks attending Popmart concerts.

 

[jeevey]

What makes it complete?

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

Pop is a terrible album lyrically.

Anybody that's said this is a fucking idiot.

 

[iron yuppie]

I think Pop is a coherent narrative about trying to fill a spiritual void through material hedonism. Really the ramshackle/unfinished feel of some of the songs complements that theme perfectly, as though the sheen on top is not enough to conceal the unraveling underneath.

I feel like I've seen this somewhere before.

 

[mama cass]

What makes it complete?

for me, POP makes a cohesive narrative from start to finish... by the end of it, i feel like i've been somewhere... the songs all have their place, none are superfluous, with the lighter themes lifting the listener out of the darker moments on the record... imo that's what makes it feel complete, sonically and emotionally, and the only other 2 albums i feel the same way about are JT and AB... there's not too much, and there's not too little, it's perfectly balanced

 

[mama cass]

Anybody that's said this is a fucking idiot.

couldn't agree more

 

[Mrs. Garrison]

PoP is a great record. It was a crazy time in my life having just discharged from the army and then moved back home, only to find that civilian life was creepy weird and slow paced compared to what I was used to. Adjustment was difficult for me, as was finding a decent job and holding onto it at the time. Part of me wished I was still in the army, and I missed my friends back there more than I would ever admit. Eventually I would find a job overseas and so I packed up and moved to South Korea for a bit.

It was in the chaotic city of Seoul that I discovered PoP for the very first time. It was fresh out on CD, I purchased it at the PX and was carrying it around with a friend of mine as we navigated the minefield of a city in search of an afternoon drink and a bite to eat. We found a hole in the wall place, a couple of floors above a major intersection in Itaewon, which is a large shopping district in Seoul. As we sat and ordered our drinks I had pulled out the CD and was looking at it when the young Korean bartender looked at it and asked what I had. I handed the CD to him and he enthusiastically put it into their sound system and turned it up a few notches while we drank and ate lunch.

This was my first listen to PoP, and to this day I can still remember looking out the large windows of the bar down to the city streets below, all of the cars deadlocked in traffic, honking their horns and some drivers even yelling at each other in Korean with an occasional shaking of the fist. This was all drowned out by the blaring, urgent chaos of 'Mofo' but it could have been a video for the song. In my mind its the image I see whenever I hear that song. It only makes sense of the situation we were in.

'Staring at the Sun' reminds me of the time I rented out a tiny apartment on the rooftop of a 6 storey hotel. There were two apartments up there, on rented by me and the other rented by a girl who worked down in a bar downtown. You can imagine that we had a lot of late nights up there! So the entire rooftop of the hotel was our front yard, as id tell guests. I had a table with chairs and an umbrella and a kiddie pool for those hot afternoons. 'Staring at the Sun' reminded me of those rooftop cookouts, which often turned into moonlight parties under the neon glow of the Hawaii Hotel's signature sign. That's where songs like 'last night on earth' and 'gone' really make sense. Or 'velvet dress' and 'playboy mansion', depending on just how interesting the nights would get, as they often did

The day after perfect song would be, of course, 'wake up dead man', there's no explanation needed for that.

I remember one day in particular, probably in July, I came outside to the searing heat and found one of our previous nights guests laid out on a lounge chair still wearing his Hawaiian shirt. I woke him up, he was a sort of Latino version of a "magnum PI", and after a few moments he looked at me through bloodshot eyes and all he could say was "it rained". Sure enough some of the other lounge chairs were still damp and it had rained throughout the night and he slept through it all. Another time one of the parties had gotten a little out of hand and someone, presumably a bar girl, had put a hole in the kiddie pool, so we woke up to an inch of standing water all over the rooftop. Nice.

Those days were great but I don't think I would want to live through them again, it would probably kill me. In fact im sure it would, though it would be an interesting way to go.

I realize this post has turned into a walk down memory lane for me, but I will always associate that year with my time over there. In fact, thanks to this thread, I have PoP in now for a nice sunday listen. Its a great album and it stands with a rather chaotic and uncertain time in my own life, rocky and tumbling along with the many life changes I encountered along the way. 'Gone' is probably still my favorite song off of the record, though ive grown to love every one of them.

If only Holy Joe would have made this album - we'd have perfection.

 

[Peterrrrr]

I thought the fascinating conversation about Pop over in the new album discussion deserved a place of its own. I'm placing it in this forum rather than in lyrics discussion because I think that particularly with Pop, the sound of the songs has an important part in forming the sense of the record. Here are a few of the competing assertions we've seen:

Pop is a great record
Pop sucks donkey balls.
Pop is a terrible album lyrically.
Pop contains some of Bono's most moving lyrics.
Pop deals with loss of faith.
No it doesn't, because Bono never lost his faith.
Pop is erratic and lacks cohesion.
No, it's thematically and sonically very cohesive.
Production is terrible.
It's okay.

Some further questions:

Who is the "her" of WUDM?
How can we describe the emotional experience of the record? Is it loss of faith or something else, and do we need to consider Bono's personal experience to answer this question?
Is the production of the record just terrible, or does it sound that way for a reason?
Do all the songs contribute to a thematic or emotional unity in the record or are some disconnected?
Is Please an encouraging song, and IYWTVD a comforting one? Is Playboy Mansion shallow?

And so on.

Would love to see Bono lose his faith, his lyrics would take new hights. Imagenie him wrting Dawkins/Hitchesn lyrcis...

 

[quiltybones]

I love Pop, and I'm squarely in the "it's very cohesive" camp. It's major theme, I think, is "the absence of God."

"A narrative about trying to fill a spiritual void through material hedonism." This states it perfectly.

I could be overthinking it, but I've always thought the "her" of Wake Up Dead Man was the same character who headed to the Discoteque despite "knowing there's something more;" the same character who engaged in meaningless casual sex in Do You Feel Loved; the same character who would be "dead in a week" from Last Night on Earth. Her plunge into hedonism destroyed her, and why didn't Jesus intervene? The answer to that question that Bono considers throughout the album is that maybe it's because He's not there. I find this doubt remarkable and honest, and Wake Up Dead man seems a perfect song to cap off the 90's - a decade in which, arguably, the major theme was spiritual doubt and its relation to hedonism.

As for Playboy Manion ... I don't know if "shallow" is the word. I think it's just too on the nose as a metaphor for a kind of secular Heaven in a world without God.

Cheers.

 

[Mrs. Garrison]

"Its like, im not speaking Alien you motherfuckers?" That's something we'd have said back then - I think. People understood and people argued to agree. I found my voice in that I had no voice whatsoever. Sirens went off and we're still into the killing. Not going to stop now - sirens going off nobody take cover. Lights everywhere and we're lost in the fog, growing fog collecting above us into a smoky sky. Lights flashing up into the heavens between the smokescreen of ominous clouds. They could kill us at any moment and we were damn sure ready, mocking them even, fucking bring it bitches! That's PoP.

 

[lemonfly]

Did Bono suffer a crisis of faith? My 15 year old brain was in no doubt that he had fallen off a spiritual cliff when I first heard it in March 97. I actually remember feeling a little concerned for him. For me, Pop has a strong theme of addiction running through it (drugs, sex, consumerism), and Bono's raw lyrics and vocals is what makes the album so fascinating. All the electro beats were an unnecessary distraction. It was a great shame everyone was only fixated on "U2 doing dance music" at the time. It detracted from what is a real heavy motherfucker of an album.

 

[Vlaco]

On a serious note: what I like about Pop:

Adventurous, dark, groovy, great lyrics, risky, new territory, excellent rhythm section (Adam's best album and Larry did a great job too), great riffs, Popmart, Please live (one of U2's greatest moments), Do You Feel Loved?, Mofo live (kickass show opener), Gone, Last Night On Earth live. I adore If God Will Send His Angels and I like The Playboy Mansion (two unpopular opinions).

 

[nbelcik]

"I don't think the lyrics are worth a shit to be honest, if you ask me. I think it's all about drums." -- Larry...Lets not forget that Larry was on his A game this record. Mofo is a powerhouse on the record and it's because of Larry.

 

[jeevey]

"I don't think the lyrics are worth a shit to be honest, if you ask me. I think it's all about drums." -- Larry...Lets not forget that Larry was on his A game this record. Mofo is a powerhouse on the record and it's because of Larry.

I think we need a citation on that one.

 

[jeevey]

Did Bono suffer a crisis of faith? My 15 year old brain was in no doubt that he had fallen off a spiritual cliff when I first heard it in March 97. I actually remember feeling a little concerned for him. For me, Pop has a strong theme of addiction running through it (drugs, sex, consumerism), and Bono's raw lyrics and vocals is what makes the album so fascinating. All the electro beats were an unnecessary distraction. It was a great shame everyone was only fixated on "U2 doing dance music" at the time. It detracted from what is a real heavy motherfucker of an album.

It's really interesting to look back at old interviews of him from the time. He certainly seems to be in a different place, so to speak- wired, dark, aggressive and anxious. What I can't tell is if we were seeing Bono having fallen off a cliff or Bono playing a character that we could call The Boxer, if someone hasn't already.

 

[LadySpinHead]

Wasn't Larry out from his back surgery when they were recording? I thought I remember reading that he asked the band to wait for him, but they didn't, so he had to come in and fill in the songs when they were already far along. So maybe his awesome drumming was because of his competitive nature, competing against the drum machines.

 

[FlyontheHorizon]

PoP is a great record. It was a crazy time in my life having just discharged from the army and then moved back home, only to find that civilian life was creepy weird and slow paced compared to what I was used to. Adjustment was difficult for me, as was finding a decent job and holding onto it at the time. Part of me wished I was still in the army, and I missed my friends back there more than I would ever admit. Eventually I would find a job overseas and so I packed up and moved to South Korea for a bit.

It was in the chaotic city of Seoul that I discovered PoP for the very first time. It was fresh out on CD, I purchased it at the PX and was carrying it around with a friend of mine as we navigated the minefield of a city in search of an afternoon drink and a bite to eat. We found a hole in the wall place, a couple of floors above a major intersection in Itaewon, which is a large shopping district in Seoul. As we sat and ordered our drinks I had pulled out the CD and was looking at it when the young Korean bartender looked at it and asked what I had. I handed the CD to him and he enthusiastically put it into their sound system and turned it up a few notches while we drank and ate lunch.

This was my first listen to PoP, and to this day I can still remember looking out the large windows of the bar down to the city streets below, all of the cars deadlocked in traffic, honking their horns and some drivers even yelling at each other in Korean with an occasional shaking of the fist. This was all drowned out by the blaring, urgent chaos of 'Mofo' but it could have been a video for the song. In my mind its the image I see whenever I hear that song. It only makes sense of the situation we were in.

'Staring at the Sun' reminds me of the time I rented out a tiny apartment on the rooftop of a 6 storey hotel. There were two apartments up there, on rented by me and the other rented by a girl who worked down in a bar downtown. You can imagine that we had a lot of late nights up there! So the entire rooftop of the hotel was our front yard, as id tell guests. I had a table with chairs and an umbrella and a kiddie pool for those hot afternoons. 'Staring at the Sun' reminded me of those rooftop cookouts, which often turned into moonlight parties under the neon glow of the Hawaii Hotel's signature sign. That's where songs like 'last night on earth' and 'gone' really make sense. Or 'velvet dress' and 'playboy mansion', depending on just how interesting the nights would get, as they often did

The day after perfect song would be, of course, 'wake up dead man', there's no explanation needed for that.

I remember one day in particular, probably in July, I came outside to the searing heat and found one of our previous nights guests laid out on a lounge chair still wearing his Hawaiian shirt. I woke him up, he was a sort of Latino version of a "magnum PI", and after a few moments he looked at me through bloodshot eyes and all he could say was "it rained". Sure enough some of the other lounge chairs were still damp and it had rained throughout the night and he slept through it all. Another time one of the parties had gotten a little out of hand and someone, presumably a bar girl, had put a hole in the kiddie pool, so we woke up to an inch of standing water all over the rooftop. Nice.

Those days were great but I don't think I would want to live through them again, it would probably kill me. In fact im sure it would, though it would be an interesting way to go.

I realize this post has turned into a walk down memory lane for me, but I will always associate that year with my time over there. In fact, thanks to this thread, I have PoP in now for a nice sunday listen. Its a great album and it stands with a rather chaotic and uncertain time in my own life, rocky and tumbling along with the many life changes I encountered along the way. 'Gone' is probably still my favorite song off of the record, though ive grown to love every one of them.

If only Holy Joe would have made this album - we'd have perfection.

Great post! Thank you.

 

[Rachel D.]

U2 by U2 says that Edge wrote the opening words to Wake Up Dead Man during the Zooropa sessions. He said it was the lowest point of his spiritual faith and that he wrote it in his car before going into his empty house after his divorce. I just looked and it's on page 269. You all should read that book; you might learn something, but then you'd have less to argue pointlessly about...

Spoiler

Sorry, I'm in a really bad mood today.

 

[FlyontheHorizon]

I don't think Bono ever lost his faith, nor was he ever so confident about it. Pop is sort of the hangover to ZooTV, which was in turn a response to the confidence of Rattle & Hum. Bono wanted so hard to believe, to have anything to hang onto, but he is distracted by the excesses of consumer culture. As in the live performances of Mofo, when he sings, "Move me a mountain." This reminds me a bit of somewhere in the Bible that says something like, If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can tell the mountain, "Go there," and it will go. The same general idea applies, that he wishes he had that smallest modicum of faith. Or maybe - I don't know - he is asking God to move that mountain for him (get it out of his way) because he does not have enough faith to even dare tell the mountain to move (confront the mountain directly). That's a common theme throughout the album, a futile wishing that problems would just go away, as hinted at in Mofo, Gone, The Playboy Mansion, Please, and Wake Up Dead Man (off the top of my head). He's trying to find faith but is always distracted. I don't think he'd sing about moving mountains, for example, if he thought such a thing was completely hopeless. But I also don't think he'd sing that if he was confident that he had enough faith that moving a mountain wasn't such a big deal. It's about wanting to have faith, not about not having it at all or about having plenty of it.

I'm not really sure if Bono intends to isolate himself from the audience by singing solely about himself, though. Rather, it applies to anyone trying to find oneself in a hedonistic and materialistic society, which includes Bono, whatever one's personal beliefs. He's saying that he's searching as much as everyone, as in Still Haven't Found (remember the Las Vegas music video), he doesn't have any answers. It all comes down to what it is that you're holding onto, what do you believe in to "get you through / The gates of the Playboy Mansion," and what that "Playboy Mansion" means to you.

(Note: Just a hypothesis, but I was going back through the lyrics of "The Playboy Mansion" to double-check my post, and I came across, "Love, come on down / Don't wake her, she'll come around." Could it be that this is the same "her" in Wake Up Dead Man? Maybe the "her" referred to in both cases is faith, whatever the faith is in? I'm not really sure.)

 

[brooklynmike]

PoP is a great record. It was a crazy time in my life having just discharged from the army and then moved back home, only to find that civilian life was creepy weird and slow paced compared to what I was used to. Adjustment was difficult for me, as was finding a decent job and holding onto it at the time. Part of me wished I was still in the army, and I missed my friends back there more than I would ever admit. Eventually I would find a job overseas and so I packed up and moved to South Korea for a bit.

It was in the chaotic city of Seoul that I discovered PoP for the very first time. It was fresh out on CD, I purchased it at the PX and was carrying it around with a friend of mine as we navigated the minefield of a city in search of an afternoon drink and a bite to eat. We found a hole in the wall place, a couple of floors above a major intersection in Itaewon, which is a large shopping district in Seoul. As we sat and ordered our drinks I had pulled out the CD and was looking at it when the young Korean bartender looked at it and asked what I had. I handed the CD to him and he enthusiastically put it into their sound system and turned it up a few notches while we drank and ate lunch.

This was my first listen to PoP, and to this day I can still remember looking out the large windows of the bar down to the city streets below, all of the cars deadlocked in traffic, honking their horns and some drivers even yelling at each other in Korean with an occasional shaking of the fist. This was all drowned out by the blaring, urgent chaos of 'Mofo' but it could have been a video for the song. In my mind its the image I see whenever I hear that song. It only makes sense of the situation we were in.

'Staring at the Sun' reminds me of the time I rented out a tiny apartment on the rooftop of a 6 storey hotel. There were two apartments up there, on rented by me and the other rented by a girl who worked down in a bar downtown. You can imagine that we had a lot of late nights up there! So the entire rooftop of the hotel was our front yard, as id tell guests. I had a table with chairs and an umbrella and a kiddie pool for those hot afternoons. 'Staring at the Sun' reminded me of those rooftop cookouts, which often turned into moonlight parties under the neon glow of the Hawaii Hotel's signature sign. That's where songs like 'last night on earth' and 'gone' really make sense. Or 'velvet dress' and 'playboy mansion', depending on just how interesting the nights would get, as they often did

The day after perfect song would be, of course, 'wake up dead man', there's no explanation needed for that.

I remember one day in particular, probably in July, I came outside to the searing heat and found one of our previous nights guests laid out on a lounge chair still wearing his Hawaiian shirt. I woke him up, he was a sort of Latino version of a "magnum PI", and after a few moments he looked at me through bloodshot eyes and all he could say was "it rained". Sure enough some of the other lounge chairs were still damp and it had rained throughout the night and he slept through it all. Another time one of the parties had gotten a little out of hand and someone, presumably a bar girl, had put a hole in the kiddie pool, so we woke up to an inch of standing water all over the rooftop. Nice.

Those days were great but I don't think I would want to live through them again, it would probably kill me. In fact im sure it would, though it would be an interesting way to go.

I realize this post has turned into a walk down memory lane for me, but I will always associate that year with my time over there. In fact, thanks to this thread, I have PoP in now for a nice sunday listen. Its a great album and it stands with a rather chaotic and uncertain time in my own life, rocky and tumbling along with the many life changes I encountered along the way. 'Gone' is probably still my favorite song off of the record, though ive grown to love every one of them.

If only Holy Joe would have made this album - we'd have perfection.

I enjoyed reading this post. 16 years later you can pull up sights, sounds and smells that evoke an emotion.

Each U2 album I've gotten since Achtung Baby has an emotional timestamp.

 

[jeevey]

U2 by U2 says that Edge wrote the opening words to Wake Up Dead Man during the Zooropa sessions. He said it was the lowest point of his spiritual faith and that he wrote it in his car before going into his empty house after his divorce. I just looked and it's on page 269. You all should read that book; you might learn something, but then you'd have less to argue pointlessly about...

Spoiler

Sorry, I'm in a really bad mood today.

The book is a great source and I probably quote it way too much. I love that image of Edge sitting in the car in front of the empty house. But self report of the author can't tell the whole story of a piece of work; ultimately the piece has to tell its own story.

Hope your day gets better.

 

[Mrs. Garrison]

Great post! Thank you.

I enjoyed reading this post. 16 years later you can pull up sights, sounds and smells that evoke an emotion.

Each U2 album I've gotten since Achtung Baby has an emotional timestamp.

Thanks. Its amazing what goes on in the layers of the human mind. Half the time I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner last night but something like this really sticks out. 1997 was quite a year.

 

[BlueSilkenSky]

Pop is an amazing album. It feels like a more mature Achtung Baby (like an Achtung Man, maybe ). And interestingly enough, the tour seemed to be a less mature Zoo TV to me, as if trying to compensate for the darker themes. There are some things that could have been improved on it, but I enjoy the overall result. Whenever I haven't been listening to U2 very often, it's this album or Boy that brings me back to them, usually.

I've written something long about this album before that fully explains my thoughts on it... *goes to find it*