When this record hit the pre-millennial streets, U2 were at the top of the pile and were setting the paces by ditching rock in favor of “going techno.” For those readers who might not recall, “going techno” was the pretty much the bubonic plague of the post-Cobain world. Basically, the entertainment powers that be were all looking for the *next* Nirvana — a paradigm shift that would likewise shift units. “Techno” was the great Eurodisco menace that *might* be able to convert an American audience that was vaguely aware of rave culture and technofuturism. That “wicked firestarter” fellow from the Prodigy was going to be the next Johnny Rotten. In retrospect, “techno” was the Y2K of musical trends, a lot of sound and fury signifying nary a blip or twitter — for better or worse, mind you. The US college-age music audience did embrace Phish and Creed instead.
Anyway, many alt-rock types were almost burnt at the stake for going techno, but the big dog in the “we dig the new sounds” controversy was U2. After all, the stellar Achtung Baby and Zooropa records used beats and looping and other dance music sleight-of-hand. If any band could pull the reactionary arena rock audience into the block-rockin’ future, it would be the reconfigured, reinvigorated post-maudlin, post-modern U2.
Too bad the band gave up on the future with Pop. Rather than embracing the new, the band retreated into its mid-80s finger-pointing mode, gussying up the tracks with some nifty bangs and whooshes hoping no one would notice.
The calculated, sensible All That You Can’t Leave Behind is often credited as U2’s return to mainstream form. However, that return begins with Pop — a hectoring, preachy record that subtracts the apocalyptic glee of Achtung/Zooropa and piles on the morning-after self-pity.
Damnation and salvation lurk in the shadows of all three of U2’s 1990s albums. Achtung Baby is the “Let’s ride out this hell train” record, all dark sexuality and sardonic humor. Zooropa is the purgatory record — all numbness and vague notions of having been vain and frivolous. The clearest morality comes through the voice of Johnny Cash’s “The Wanderer.” And all that business about a “bible and a gun” is hardly hopeful. These are ambiguous records.
If Achtung and Zooropa are the Inferno and the Purgatorio (and I don’t think they intentionally are), then Pop is the Paradiso — the boring one full of high-minded metaphysics and moralizing. “Discotheque” is the only fun track on the album, and this song is interrupted by a reminder that it’s time to get right with the great disco ball in the sky.
You’re looking for the one
But you know you’re somewhere else instead
You want to be the song
Be the song that you hear in your head
The should-be-naughty-but-isn’t “Mofo” is all about spiritual questing as well. Rock and roll (not techno!) is posited as part of the salvation process.
Looking for to save my save my soul
Looking in the places where no flowers grow
Looking for to fill that God shaped hole
Mother…mother sucking rock and roll (Mother…)
Additionally, the speaker (ostensibly Bono) is trying to find himself after a period of hedonism (perhaps whilst wearing devil horns and a gilded suit) — “Looking for the father of my two little girls.”
The hits just keep on coming, too. Much was made about U2’s gargantuan PopMart tour in support of this album. The advance word was that the band was embracing Warholian pop art and American-style bigness much in the same way the ZOO TV tour made art out of new Europe meets old Europe sleaze. However, the tone of the tour — with its giant yellow arch and Dean Martin-sized martini olive seemed less fun-loving and more finger-wagging. It’s not just the props — take for instance “Miami” — gone is “Zooropa’s” ambiguous, campy play with advertising clichés –
Zooropa…a bluer kind of white
Zooropa…it could be yours tonight
We’re mild and green
And squeaky clean
Zooropa…better by design
Zooropa…fly the friendly skies
Through appliance of science
We’ve got that ring of confidence
Instead, U2 uses “Miami” to paint a wholly unflattering portrait of modern American values.
Weather ’round here chopping and changing
Surgery in the air
Print shirts and southern accents
Cigars and big hair
We got the wheels, petrol is cheap
We only went there for a week
Got the sun got the sand
Got the batteries in the handycam…
Her eyes all swimming pool blue
Dumb bells on a diving board
Baby’s always attracted to the things she’s afraid of
Big girl with the sweet tooth
Watches the skinny girl in the photo shoot
Freshmen squeaky clean
She tastes of chlorine
Miami, my mammy
Similarly, the lyrics go for the hard moral sell in “The Playboy Mansion.”
If OJ is more than a drink
And a Big Mac bigger than you think
If perfume is an obsession
And talk shows, confession
What have we got to lose
Another push and we’ll be through
The gates of that mansion
Basically, the sense of play and new values that U2 toyed with on Achtung/Zooropa is pitched out in favor of attacking obvious wrongs. With Pop U2 attempts to reclaim their mantle as rock’s progressive-ish conscience. The traditionalist modern rock of All That You Can’t Leave Behind helped this kind of strident material go down easier with U2’s mainstream audience. But Pop was the beginning of U2’s retreat from modernity and weirdness. The album closes with the unmistakably serious “Wake Up Deadman,” a song that actually asks Jesus to “rewind it just once more.” If that isn’t a retreat from the scary jumble of contemporary living, I don’t know what is. It took U2 another album for the music to match the nostalgia of Bono’s lyrics. However, U2 as a forward-looking band was pretty much over with this trend-hopping, problematic record.
“You can keep this suit of lights,” indeed.
