U2 - "Pop": How do you rate the album? (Poll).

Yea its kinda the last "concept" album of theirs.

 

Starts as a party. Moves to late night reflection. Ends up a hangover. Brilliant.

 

Pop is definetely U2's Monster.

 

Zooropa was their last great album. Pop was the last time they tried to make a great album. Afterwards they completely dispensed with all the interesting progress they'd made in the 90's, going so far as to apologise for it, and settling on a lukewarm version of their older selves, cynically calculated to sell stadium tickets and garner airplay on fm rock radio. To this day they continue to disparage and neglect Zooropa, Pop, and Passengers lest they scare off the soccer mum audience whose main prerogative is 'Beautiful Day,' and 'With or Without You.' They haven't taken a single risk in the last twenty years -and for people rich enough to take as many risks as they want, this only goes to show their complete lack of both interest and integrity. They are the biggest sellouts imaginable.

 

While I would agree in principle with this, I think you are being slightly harsh insofar that there are some good tracks among the dross on their latest releases.

Also, as some others have mentioned NLOTH did take some risks but in the aftermath of it being a commercial disaster they rolled back and reverted to stadium rock blandness.

I even recall Bono taking to wearing eyeliner when NLOTH was being promoted which was certainly odd.

 

I saw them twice on the Pop tour. Miami live was amazing!

 

I generally agree with this... however, I do think they took risks on NLOTH. I have said it before, but if they ditched songs like "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" (what a horrible song title) "Stand Up Comedy" and "Get on Your Boots", I think you have an amazing U2 album. It is still, for me, the best U2 album since Pop.

 

Those 8 opening songs back to back...what a rockin' opener.

Setlist from this show: U2 Miami, 1997-11-14, Pro Player Stadium, PopMart Tour - U2 on tour

 

I had forgotten how much I love the live version of Miami. You can almost feel the crunch between your teeth when the live version kicks in.....and that seamless transition into bullet the blue.

 

I voted: "One of their best, but not the best."

My mom bought this CD when it came out and played it a lot around the house. I was very close with her that year because my dad was stationed in South Korea for a year and we were in America without him. It was a period of real growth for me and my older brother and I really associate this album with that time. I've always liked it a lot, but I had no preconceived notions about what it should or could sound like, because this was my very first U2 album. I thought they always sounded like this!

I especially love Last Night on Earth, Discotheque, If God Will Send His Angels, Please, Staring at the Sun and Wake Up Dead Man.

I've never been a HUGE fan, but I really like U2's work in the '80s and '90s (except Zooropa, which I never liked). After 2000 they are so hit and miss for me. Pop would be in my top five somewhere.

 

Always bugged me not having Mofo as the opener considering how amazing it worked live in that spot

 

I'm pretty sure that's the last time they played "Miami" on the tour.

They'd actually dropped it from the set earlier in the tour but obviously felt the need to bring it back for that show...

 

No more words !

 

It's a complete miscalculation. An honest, valid attempt to try something new that doesn't work and quality wise, it sucks.

 

I voted “average.”

It’s underrated for sure, but it’s not the lost masterpiece some make it out to be.

If we’re being honest there isn’t a single “homerun” U2 song on Pop. They come close a couple of times, but overall it’s a swing and a miss.

The thing about Pop that stand out to me is that there is a certain “dullness” to many of the tracks. The band sounds exhausted to me. Like they needed to take another year off and come back energized. Usually, there is a palpable joy present on most U2 albums. I don’t hear at all on Pop.

I will agree that many of the tracks are better when played live.

 

do you think the same about zooropa or even the passengers album?

 

Surprisingly, I like Passengers (well parts of it) and Zooropa but "Pop" I dislike the songs. As someone else pointed out, the songs on "Pop" benefit from the energy of live performance but still think the material is weak.

 

It's an interesting perspective, but one I find difficult to believe. Perhaps you are thinking from the perspective of a deep-fan "true believer", someone who was in to REM before the mass public caught on? Because if that's so, then I won't argue, as that was never me. If you say the consensus among the hard-core fan base is that Monster is when they jumped the shark, i can accept that, because hard-core fans appreciate and judge their band on an artistic aesthetic that doesn't necessarily correspond to sales.

But from a public, commercial, mass popularity POV? That's much more difficult to agree to. The pattern of sales doesn't support it. Monster was a hugely successful commercial album, Hi-Fi was where they fell off a commercial cliff. You say Monster's sales was carry-over from the success of the previous records, but carry-over doesn't seem to work that way. Mick Jagger once said that when the Stones would release a new album, the first million were sold because "we're the Rolling Stones". But after that, sales reflected the merits of the album in question.

That makes sense. If a record is regarded as a significant disappointment, it doesn't sell as much as the previous highly-regarded LP, it sells significantly less. I mean, look at other examples from the same era: Oasis had huge success with Morning Glory, then Be Here Now came out, and was regarded by many as a big disappointment. Did Be Here Now sell great the first week because of the goodwill built up by their first two albums? Sure it did. But did it end up selling as many copies as Morning Glory? Nowhere close.

Also, consider Weezer. Their debut album (the blue album) was a big smash hit, going triple-platinum. In 1996, the follow-up was highly anticipated. When Pinkerton came out, the fan base reaction was negative. Did it sell as much as blue? Again, not even close. It went gold only*, a fraction of the debut.

So the "career killer" pattern is pretty clear: The career-killer sells well the first week or so, riding the wave of the previous popular album, but if the market dislikes it on its own terms, it then tanks, and ends up selling a fraction of the highly-regarded previous albums.

Monster, by contrast, sold as much as Automatic did. Same sales, no slack off at all. That strongly suggests a very positive reaction to the record, no evidence that it was regarded as a failure by the mass fan base that was buying 3-4 million REM albums per release.

In contrast, Hi-Fi as all the markings of being the mass market career-killer. It sold a million copies pretty quick, because it was the new REM album, and was thus coasting off the huge market created by Out of Time, Automatic, and Monster. But when fans realized it wasn't up to par, it tanked, and then the band never recovered.



* Years later, Pinkerton crept up to platinum, because for some bizarre reason, over time it became a kind of "cult classic" for many, with lots of positive historical reappraisal. I still think it stinks, like I did in 1996, but that's neither here nor there for our purpose.

 

Beginning of a long downhill slide for me... this album seemed to be the point where their albums became self consciously over-thought. Less than average.

 

Nope. I was aware of REM in their early days - I had friends who were fans in 1982 - but I never liked them myself, so I have no dog in this hunt.

I know that "Monster" sold a ton - and then 99% of those CDs ended up in used shops!

"Monster" just smells like a "momentum album" that sold because people liked its predecessors. With albums like that, the decline in popularity doesn't hit until the next album.

I mean, Hootie and Alanis sold a ton of copies of their "follow-ups to the big hit" as well, but it's hard to claim either of those followups were truly "popular"...

 

You seem to put a lot of 'stock' in the stock of used CDs you encounter of Monster.

That's nice, but it's also anecdotal, particularly compared to sales data.

As for Hootie, I think they support the pattern of others I mentioned: Fairweather Johnson did go 3x platinum, but that was a small fraction of the 15x platinum of the debut. That's the kind of steep drop-off characteristic of the wave-riding, career-killer. That fits what we see with Hi-Fi, but not with Monster.

 

I would agree that U2 never pulled it off as a European dance act. They had their moments, and the lead single was pretty strong. However, I rated this at the bottom or near bottom of their catalogue. Too many strong albums to contend with .

 

I never knew I was so basic for appreciating No Line on the Horizon and thinking they had done something new for an old band. LOL

It's kind of like Lady Gaga. She sold a ton of Born This Way (even minus the 99 cent brief promotion by Amazon) because of The Fame/The Fame Monster. But the backlash after the disappointment with Born This Way for many fans of her previous work and Gaga fatigue showed up in a huge reduction in sales with the next album. And she's never captured that magic again saleswise.

 

Sales data doesn't really "prove" popularity, though. I focus on the used CD issue because that says to me a lot of people who bought "Monster" didn't actually like it.

"Monster", "Out of Time" and "Automatic" all sold similar amounts - all are 4X platinum - but "Monster" is the only one that became a used CD store punch line.

And this doesn't come from my personal observations - everyone who buys used CDs knows how ubiquitous "Monster" has been in those racks for more than 20 years - it's arguably the "king of the used CD racks".

If people liked "Monster" so much, why'd they sell their copies en masse?

 

Agree - and she probably never will, given how much the sales environment has declined even since the "lean years" of 2008-2011.

I agree that "ArtPop" was the album that showed how little-liked "BTW" was. Didn't help that I think a lot of people were starting to get tired of Gaga's shtick by 2013/14 as well - her wild clothes and antics started to wear thin for a lot of folks.

Gaga managed to semi-reinvent herself between the "ArtPop" tour and "Joanne" in 2016. She did the Tony Bennett album along with well-received spots like "Sound of Music" on the Oscars, and her 2017 Super Bowl appearance was a big hit.

I'll be very interested to see how Gaga does in the future. "Joanne" actually appears to have sold worse than "ArtPop" - but it's viewed as a bigger hit!

I think that's because the "Joanne" tour was a total smash. Ticket sales for the "ArtPop" tour weren't bad, but they were disappointing, whereas the 2017 tour sold like gangbusters.

Is it possible Gaga's become an artist people will see live but not support her new music? Could be - she has a justly deserved reputation as a stellar live performer, so maybe she's the glam version of the Dead!