The U2 album Bono thought was a misfire: “Great idea for an album”
There are usually a handful of camps regarding how U2 is perceived in the public eye. Either they are one of the titans of rock everyone should kneel to, they are one of the worst rock bands in existence, or they are merely just dad music that 50-somethings crank in their car to remember their glory years. All are valid arguments, but even if Bono can seem a bit pretentious, he at least knew when he messed up when making the album Pop.
Because for a brief second there, all of the people saying that U2 were one of the best bands in the world actually had a fair argument. They had come out of the dingy punk scene in Ireland, and by the time they hit the end of the 1980s, they made everyone feel like change through music was actually possible when they released The Joshua Tree.
Even when they entered the decade that should have killed them, Achtung Baby shot them back into the stratosphere by playing to the exact opposite of the group’s strengths. There had been futuristic soundscapes on their albums before, but hearing them get into electronic music while also shedding their skin as the rock and roll saviours made them actually feel credible in the age of irony.
Zooropa seemed to continue on the same trajectory as the last album, but there were a few signs pointing to where everything would go wrong. The industrial-aligned sound on tracks like ‘Numb’ was certainly interesting for what it was. Still, it felt like they were almost leaning too far into ironic territory, as if they were trying their hardest to let everyone know that the life of a rockstar was actually not all it was cracked up to be.
But the minute Pop came out, it seemed like the group had collectively forgotten what made them a great band to begin with. Sure, they could still write a handful of well-produced tunes, but the wash of glitchy production felt like they were trying on their best pop star impressions and decided that they were going to make their own version of a Chemical Brothers record.
While the Chemical Brothers are great for what they do, Bono admitted that the entire Pop operation was pretty much dead on arrival, telling Rolling Stone, “[It’s] an earnest band with political overtones [that] kicks off their boots for dancing shoes. Supposed to be the return to pop from the experimental period that included Zooropa. Great idea for an album. We just misfired –booked the tour before we finished the album.”
Granted, some songs land on a solid groove, including the danceable energy of a song like ‘Discotheque’. When you look at the rest of the project, though, it feels more like everyone was waiting for Bono and The Edge to get done fiddling around with their sequencers and synthesisers so they could actually get the rest of the record finished.
Since the entire record fell on deaf ears, All That You Can’t Leave You Behind almost felt like an overcorrection in the opposite direction. U2 could still write songs that hit people right in the heart, but the minute that ‘Beautiful Day’ washed over the radio for the first time, it was the musical version of them saying, “Sorry for what happened earlier”.
