After Achtung Baby and Zooropa demolished my prejudices against them, I cast a suspicious glance further down the catalog and said, “I better flippin’ hate Pop.”
Where I had only heard Zooropa used as a punchline, Pop had an even less flattering reputation. Over the years, it has often come up as an example of respected band dropping a real stinker. The band’s own opinions on the record haven’t helped rebut that reputation, and being the last record before All That You Can’t Leave Behind’s alleged return to form, Pop became the scapegoat for U2’s ill-advised detour into dance music. Outside of its accompanying tour, the group has rarely played any of these songs live.
But somehow, despite its reputation among both fans and the band themselves, this is the last great record they made.
At the dawn of the 90s, U2 were eager to reinvent themselves. Achtung Baby saw them integrating elements of electronica, industrial, and dance music into their brand of sonically adventurous arena rock. Zooropa took that even further, abandoning most of the core elements of their sound to create a wonderfully weird pop record from another dimension. After the multimedia coup-de-grace that was the Zoo TV tour, they dug even deeper. Larry and Adam recorded an electronic version of the Mission Impossible theme that netted chart success and a Grammy nod. Bono and the Edge wrote the theme for Goldeneye for Tina Turner. They had a massive hit in the single “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” from the Batman Forever soundtrack. They joined longtime producer Brian Eno to form the experimental side project Passengers (vinyl copies of Original Soundtracks 1 are prohibitively expensive, or else it would be included here) that had its own hit in “Miss Sarajevo.”
All of their experimentation in that decade culminates on Pop. Flood returned from the Zooropa sessions, along with new-wave producer Steve Osbourne and Howie B, who was initially given the role of “DJ and Vibes.” Howie B also took the band to different nightclubs to give them a better understanding of the dance scene. Where Zooropa used samples, Pop found the group’s performances turned into samples themselves and mixed like a dance record.
It’s certainly the odd duck of U2’s discography, even in the light of Zooropa, but that’s not an indictment of its quality at all. In fact, if there’s a misstep here, I’m not sure what it is. The best moments on the disc stand their own against their full body of work. Tracks like “Mofo,” “Last Night On Earth,” and “Miami” have more than a tint of brooding industrial darkness. “Mofo” could probably sneak onto a Nine Inch Nails playlist and fool a few newbies. “Discotheque,” “Gone,” and “Please” push hard into dance grooves under Bono’s expert hooks and Edge’s unrecognizable guitar textures.
It’s not a complete facelift though. There’s still plenty of classic U2isms. “Do You Feel Loved” offers one of Bono’s finest one-line choruses. “If God Will Send His Angels” could have been snuck into the back half of The Joshua Tree with a different mix. “Staring at the Sun” is straight Britpop. “If You Wear That Velvet Dress” is a slowburn ballad that employs classic Edge slide guitar and one of Adam Clayton’s best bass lines. “Wake Up Dead Man” is a gothy take on gospel with some of their most overtly spiritual lyrics—even if it has the sole “fuck” in U2’s entire career.
It’s not a perfect record. “If God…” feels like it’s in the wrong spot in the sequence and takes a while to find itself. “The Playboy Mansion” doesn’t quite land. But even these moments aren’t quite bad. They just don’t shine as brightly as the rest of the record.
As someone who believed for a long time that they fell off after Joshua Tree , it was certainly a surprise to discover that Pop was their last great record. I understand why they felt they needed to change course after this, but everything since has felt a bit too conscious of their own legacy. And while we can argue about whether or not they’ve sacrificed authenticity or innovation in the name of chart success, it’s objectively true that this is the last record where U2 felt truly adventurous.