Nobody has to "play it safe" after selling 7 million records.
How corny would it look for a mid-40s band to be doing songs with concepts that they did during the 90s period, very corny....and infact I think thats actually one of the reasons that POP flopped in the US because even in their late 30s, they looked out of place doing songs like Discotheque to people.
POP was an excellent album one of my favourites but I think that the band released it too late in their careers for it to be apprciated properly image wise. Achtung Baby was realeased at just the right point where they wearnt seen as being too old to do something conceptually challenging to people, image wise. If U2 had released Achtung Baby in 1997 with the ZooTV tour it probably would have flopped too because of circumstance.
How corny would it look for a mid-40s band to be doing songs with concepts that they did during the 90s period, very corny....and infact I think thats actually one of the reasons that POP flopped in the US because even in their late 30s, they looked out of place doing songs like Discotheque to people.
POP was an excellent album one of my favourites but I think that the band released it too late in their careers for it to be apprciated properly image wise. Achtung Baby was realeased at just the right point where they wearnt seen as being too old to do something conceptually challenging to people, image wise. If U2 had released Achtung Baby in 1997 with the ZooTV tour it probably would have flopped too because of circumstance.