So, what's to disagree with?
It's an inaccurate narrative. Among other things, it is simply factually wrong to suggest that U2 discovered irony on or after Zooropa when Achtung and ZooTv were out for 1.5 years already.
He's only trying to throw the gauntlet down here (with Zooropa) as the beginning of U2 'losing the plot' that continued into POP. U2 "almost killed their career" with Zooropa? Complete nonsense. Total revision of history. As if Zooropa wasn't a fairly successful...not a sequel, but a spin-off of Achtung.
Additionally, he calls Lemon "vapid". If he were the average know-nothing fan on the street I wouldn't care. But he's writing for Spin and therefore professing to be some authority on the matter by writing a (however short) historical account. And if he's going to do this...he needs to KNOW what Lemon is fucking about if he's going to bother to call it "vapid". And if you know what Lemon is about, it might be a lot of things to you, but "vapid" is not one of them. That song is about his yearning for his mother, who had been dead for 20 years by that time. This is, arguably, the single biggest creative engine that drove Bono into what he is today. How could that song be "vapid" by any stretch of the imagination? It might be a "pile of shit" to him or anyone else, but it ain't vapid.
And what about the idea that U2 aren't proud of this record? If I wanted to I could find quotes from band members singing this album's praises as they were downplaying POP during the 'apology' phase. Zooropa never took any of that kind of stick from the band. Flatly inaccurate.
Douche from Spin said:
You know you've made it as a Serious Rock Band when an entire years-long phase of your career is so problematic that you spend a subsequent entire, years-long phase of your career apologizing for it. So let's begin at the end, shall we, with U2's apology, which we can date to a February 2002 Time magazine cover story with the headline (brace yourself) "Can Bono Save the World?
And here is U2's apology from the article he cites.
Time Magazine said:
Bono is in full rock-star mode, and he has good reason to savor the moment. U2 nearly called it quits a few years ago. After putting out Pop, the first dud of their 10-album career, in 1997, the band members -- all in their 40s, all with relationships, side interests and more money than they could ever spend -- had to decide whether there was a compelling reason to continue being a band. "Why are you still around?" asks the Edge rhetorically. "You know, you made some great records. But why are you still making records? Part of what we decided is that we had a sense or belief that we can still make the album of the year."
Never mind the idea that this^ specifically is an apology for anything, which I will leave alone (they made more excuses elsewhere - for POP) but note that he said this was the apology. Nothing else in the article comes remotely close. And not a SINGLE mention of Zooropa is made.
He speaks from absolutely no place of authority. It's not just his opinion on the music, which he is entitled to, but he was attempting to contextualize it, historically. Therefore, it's very easy to, not just disagree with it, but to DISCOUNT all of it.