ewe2
06-03-2006, 06:19 PM
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
-- Zooropa
I'm going to get all controversial here and say Zooropa is a much better album than Achtung Baby. Certainly I find it much more playable than the latter, which tails off into maudlin angst on the last three tracks. I have nothing against angst, but if you're going for that, Stay (Faraway, So Close!) trumps most angsty love songs let alone the catawauling Love Is Blindness. I speak as a U2 fan, and tend to forgive their stumbles because they often leads to a brilliant sprint. But I'm not going to forgive boring songs because they have nice production.
First, they refined the Achtung Baby sound, favouring electronica over industrial as production backdrop, then whittled the songs down to their essence. Then they whittled down the song list, and the result is a much more tightly focussed result, possibly the most focussed album they've ever made. The major themes of love, disconnection, doubt and faith, so typical of U2 lyrical concerns are never better expressed here.
Zooropa asks just what do you want from this First World home away from the real world, and answers itself: stop hiding, for a start. Babyface takes on voyueristic isolation as a replacement for intimacy, Numb is perhaps the most extreme expression of the album's nihilism: doing nothing is a lifestyle. The shimmering Lemon remarks that love is really what all this disguised desperate activity/non-activity is about. Love again is the subject of Stay, with my favourite of all U2 lyrics:
Just the bang
And the clatter
As an angel
Hits the ground
it wasn't the love this angel was looking for. Perhaps a sugardaddy instead? Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, but do you want to pay his price in return? Some Days Are Better Than Others retreats to a cyncism only a little less paralysing than Numb, sneering that your skin is white but you think you're a brother, but swings right back into a classic fusion of profane and religious love with The First Time. This is immediately undercut with the searing honesty of Dirty Day, which trashes all the above sentiments with:
Get it right
There's no blood thicker than ink
Hear what I say
Nothing's simple as you think
which simply says noone is innocent. This was apparently about The Edge's divorce, and it sums divorce up pretty well.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of Zooropa was the voice of Johnny Cash singing The Wanderer but it strikes the perfect note as innocence and guilt, doubt and faith, good and evil all meld in resignation and hope.
If you ever wanted to understand why U2 seem so bombastic and anthemic, listen to this album. Much of the succeeding music written since then seem to me to be tamer recaps of the material on the apparent trilogy of Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop, but this album hangs together much better than its predecessor and successor, without some of the more quirky excesses of either.
I like those quirky excesses, don't get me wrong, but if you wondered why Elevation lifted your hopes and then dashed them with the mediocre surrounds of All That You Can't Leave Behind, then listen to this album. It's still ahead of its time.
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
-- Zooropa
I'm going to get all controversial here and say Zooropa is a much better album than Achtung Baby. Certainly I find it much more playable than the latter, which tails off into maudlin angst on the last three tracks. I have nothing against angst, but if you're going for that, Stay (Faraway, So Close!) trumps most angsty love songs let alone the catawauling Love Is Blindness. I speak as a U2 fan, and tend to forgive their stumbles because they often leads to a brilliant sprint. But I'm not going to forgive boring songs because they have nice production.
First, they refined the Achtung Baby sound, favouring electronica over industrial as production backdrop, then whittled the songs down to their essence. Then they whittled down the song list, and the result is a much more tightly focussed result, possibly the most focussed album they've ever made. The major themes of love, disconnection, doubt and faith, so typical of U2 lyrical concerns are never better expressed here.
Zooropa asks just what do you want from this First World home away from the real world, and answers itself: stop hiding, for a start. Babyface takes on voyueristic isolation as a replacement for intimacy, Numb is perhaps the most extreme expression of the album's nihilism: doing nothing is a lifestyle. The shimmering Lemon remarks that love is really what all this disguised desperate activity/non-activity is about. Love again is the subject of Stay, with my favourite of all U2 lyrics:
Just the bang
And the clatter
As an angel
Hits the ground
it wasn't the love this angel was looking for. Perhaps a sugardaddy instead? Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, but do you want to pay his price in return? Some Days Are Better Than Others retreats to a cyncism only a little less paralysing than Numb, sneering that your skin is white but you think you're a brother, but swings right back into a classic fusion of profane and religious love with The First Time. This is immediately undercut with the searing honesty of Dirty Day, which trashes all the above sentiments with:
Get it right
There's no blood thicker than ink
Hear what I say
Nothing's simple as you think
which simply says noone is innocent. This was apparently about The Edge's divorce, and it sums divorce up pretty well.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of Zooropa was the voice of Johnny Cash singing The Wanderer but it strikes the perfect note as innocence and guilt, doubt and faith, good and evil all meld in resignation and hope.
If you ever wanted to understand why U2 seem so bombastic and anthemic, listen to this album. Much of the succeeding music written since then seem to me to be tamer recaps of the material on the apparent trilogy of Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop, but this album hangs together much better than its predecessor and successor, without some of the more quirky excesses of either.
I like those quirky excesses, don't get me wrong, but if you wondered why Elevation lifted your hopes and then dashed them with the mediocre surrounds of All That You Can't Leave Behind, then listen to this album. It's still ahead of its time.