Pop (1997)
1. Discotheque 2. Do You Feel Loved? 3. Mofo 4. If God Would Send His Angles 5. Staring at the Sun 6. Last Night On Earth 7. Gone 8. Miami 9. The Playboy Mansion 10.If You Wear That Velvet Dress 11.Please 12.Wake Up Dead Man
It had to happen eventually. After more than two decades of near-uninterrupted excellence, U2 finally delivered what can only be described as a misfire. Pop, released after a four-year silence, stands as the band’s first bona fide stumble—ambitious, yes, but misjudged in almost every way that matters.
Unlike past instances where a lengthy gap between albums signaled reinvention or evolution, this time the band elected to double down. The techno-industrial sheen first glimpsed on Achtung Baby is now the dominant mode, but where that earlier album felt exploratory and playful, this one comes off bloated and fatigued. The electronic gimmickry is everywhere—beats, loops, distortion effects—none of it particularly fresh, and all of it encumbering songs that might have stood a chance with a more stripped-down approach.
And that’s the real problem. The songs themselves just aren’t there. Consider the album’s opening salvo: Discothèque, Do You Feel Loved, and Mofo. Three tracks, back-to-back, all drenched in club synths and processed percussion, bleeding into each other with little variation. One could easily be mistaken for a 15-minute remix rather than three separate compositions. On a dance floor, perhaps tolerable. On a U2 album, it borders on parody—made worse by the now-infamous music video for Discothèque, featuring the band donning Village People attire with questionable irony.
The middle portion of the album attempts a course correction but never quite recovers. If God Will Send His Angels offers a heartfelt lyric and promising melody, but it's weighed down by clunky production flourishes—bursts of electronic fuzz and awkward pacing that rob it of emotional clarity. Gone suffers a similar fate. One can almost hear the outline of a great song, but it’s buried under unnecessary sonic abrasion. The Edge’s guitar, once the band’s sharpest asset, is rendered here into a series of wailing, unpleasant squalls—more irritant than inspiration.
And yet, not all is lost. As ever, Bono’s lyrics strive for something greater—wrestling with spiritual doubt, identity, and existential fatigue. Tracks like Wake Up Dead Man push toward the profound, with its whispered desperation resembling a prayer offered in the void. There’s honesty in these words—raw, unsettling, even profane at times (Bono drops an f-bomb, possibly for the first time on record). But once again, the production smothers the sentiment. Too many effects, too little clarity.
Upon release, critics—ever eager for a new U2 statement—greeted Pop with cautious praise. But the fanbase didn’t buy it, literally or figuratively. Enthusiasm cooled quickly. The tour, while grand in scale, reportedly hemorrhaged money, and the album was soon reappraised as a well-intentioned but misguided chapter in the band’s story.
Pop remains a curious entry in the catalogue—full of potential, occasionally compelling, but ultimately undone by its overindulgence in style over substance. Proof that even giants can lose their footing when they stray too far from the foundation that made them great.