U2 – Zooropa

Description

Zooropa is the eighth studio album by the Irish rock band U2, released on Island Records in July 1993. The album was recorded by Flood (Mark Ellis) and Robbie Adams in Dublin, Ireland during February-May 1993 – at Windmill Lane Studios, Westland Studios, and The Factory; with Flood, Brian Eno, and band member The Edge producing. Mixed by Flood and Eno.

Inspired by the band’s experiences on the Zoo TV Tour, Zooropa expanded on many of the tour’s themes of technology and media oversaturation. The record was a continuation of the group’s experimentation with alternative rock, electronic dance music, and electronic sound effects that began with their previous album, Achtung Baby, in 1991

Zooropa received generally favourable reviews from critics. Despite none of its three singles – “Numb”, “Lemon”, and “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)” – being hits consistently across regions, the record sold well upon release and peaked at number one in multiple countries. The album’s charting duration and lifetime sales of 7 million copies, however, were less than those of Achtung Baby. In 1994, Zooropa won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

When it comes to Bono, you can forget body, mind and soul, because ever since he sang, “I don’t know how to say what’s got to be said” on 1983’s ‘War’ and then kept saying stuff anyway, he’s found himself defined by his mouth more than anything. He just can’t shut up, even when he should. Interviews follow world tours, which follow recording sessions, which follow more interviews. And instead of stepping back occasionally, he always plunges in over his head.

Of course, that accounts for much of his, and U2’s, appeal. Like Springsteen, Bono gives his all, even when his all ain’t worth giving, and he can’t help but say exactly what he means. That makes him soulful, but it doesn’t make him cool. Cool and soulful stand in diametrical opposition to each other.

Yet Bono wants to embody both. So when he gets tired of himself, he puts out a ‘Rattle and Hum’ and shares space with Bob Dylan and B.B. King. Or he becomes «The Fly» and scrambles his messages so folks won’t take him seriously, all the while oblivious to the fact that when people don’t take you seriously because you told them not to, they take you even more seriously as a result.

‘Zooropa’s 10 tracks – as listenable if not necessarily as compelling a collection as you’ll hear this year – mark Bono’s latest attempts to distance himself from his work, and some of the results verge on the stunning. The boldest stroke – turning over the entire lead vocal of «The Wanderer» to Johnny Cash – works as both soulful and cool simply because Johnny Cash does. And not only that, but the song, with its bobbing synthesizer riff and its ebbing, flowing background vocals, gathers genuine momentum.

So does «Numb», the album’s first single, and one of several songs here whose nonsense lyrics derive from the Zoo TV Tour’s obsession with the same. Bono disappears from this one by turning the lead vocal – in this case, the lead mumble – over to the Edge, who, slong with Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, plays a fairly slight role in this album’s overall sound. Somehow, Brian Eno, Flood, Robbie Adams, Rob Kirwan, and Willie Manion – ‘Zooropa’s main producers, engineers, and all-around tech-hands – have turned this former punk quartet from the garages of Dublin into one element in a kaleidoscopic swirl of tape oops, samples, and other electronic wizardry.

The emphasis on micro-chips shouldn’t come as any great shock in light of ‘Achtung Baby’s flirtations with technology. Nor should it provoke talk of “progress” since techno-pop this un-discofied has been around for more than a decade. U2’s shift to high-tech merely proves they have a future, something their many fans should be relieved to know.

And, ah, the lyrics. Surely not every song babbles incoherently like ‘Zoo TV’? No, they don’t. In fact, most of them find Bono doing what he does best, or worst, depending on his mood: expressing himself. The “religious” lyrics find him confessing to his status as Prodigal Son and liking it more than his Christian fans might wish (“And I have no religion/ And I don’t know what’s what… I went out there/ In search of experience/ To taste and to touch/ And to feel as much/ As a man can/ Before he repents”). The “romantic” lyrics find him too detached for lust though not necessarily for love. And the others – well, they babble incoherently.

Strip away the gimmicks, among which one should number Bono’s (temporary?) abandonment of his trademark howling as well as Eno-Flood’s razzle-dazzle, and you’ll hear an album more typical than the hype will suggest. You’ll also rob yourself of the pleasure this album exists to convey: an aural triumph of cool over soul.

It’s about time. [Arsenio Orteza, Syndicate Magazine, September/October 1993, Vol. 8, Issue 5]

It’s always interesting, seeing how major bands fare at the hands of the music press, and reading the response of those lucky enough to get advance copies of this new offering had been no exception. Reviewers have been bewildered, confused, ecstatic, downbeat… the usual claims have been made, abuse thrown, glib cynical remarks made. So what do we have? 10 tracks recorded in the short (for a band like U2) timespan of two months, garishly dressed in video cut up artwork, publicised as ‘immediate’, ‘improvised’ and ‘experimental’. These terms, of course, are comparative: no one who listens to improvised jazz, electronic music, or avant garde rock, will find ‘Zooropa’ difficult to comprehend. Neither will anyone who has ever heard Eno’s first few solo LPs. What is challenging, however, is a band prepared to change their music, a band at the peak of success abandoning stadium rock for the layered melange of first ‘Achtung Baby’, then ‘Zooropa’. What is great is the way Bono, as lyricist, has abandoned the high ‘n’ mighty preaching of yore for some cut up entertainment: love songs, snippets of jingles, daft rhymes and more… There’s still plenty of lyrical touches, deft images, and tender moments to make it memorable, but U2 still understand that music is entertainment, and only obliquely do lyrics influence, or teach (it’s a lesson, of course, that most Christian bands never ever learn; there’s still too much talk of ‘evangelism’ and ‘witness’). So this is pop. Pop for the 1990s, pop with screaming guitars, battered rhythms, synthesizer scrawls, declaimed garbled vocals, hypnotic drumbeats, pumping bass lines, and strange, strange singing: Bono has turned his voice into another instrument for the band. He sighs, he croons, he sings in high falsetto, he yodels, he shouts, he whispers, he screams. He even lets Edge sing one song – the Germanic synth-chant of «Numb», with its strange lyrics and arcade-game synthesizer asides. Whether this is Brian Eno, the producer and extra musician, or Edge, it’s typical of the synthesizer intrusions on this album, which are high in the mix, raw samples, bleeped extras, cut up sounds adding extra sparkle and effect. What this isn’t, I suspect, is a ‘timeless’ album like, say, ‘The Joshua Tree’ was/is. This is what pop music used to be, a soundtrack for today that may not last into next week. You’ll notice I haven’t eulogised about the poetry, the nature of the songs, haven’t looked at the ‘theology’ behind it all – that’s because these songs aren’t like that. They assume personas, they fictionalise, they speak of love, and lust, and hate; they visit heaven and hell, argue with God and man. If you don’t laugh at the idea of Bono as ‘rock messiah’, or as ‘Mr Mephisto’ – be-horned devil on tour with the biggest rock band in the world – you’ll hate this album. If you enjoy modern culture, in all its tacky glory, its noise, glitter, bright lights and dance beat, then you’ll enjoy this. Like me, you’ll turn it up loud and wait for the tour this summer. [Rupert Loydell, Cross Rhythms, August 1993]

> iTunes (https://music.apple.com/us/album/zooropa/1442968012)

CD tracklist:

01. Zooropa – 6:30
02. Babyface – 4:00
03. Numb – 4:18
04. Lemon – 6:56
05. Stay (Faraway, So Close!) – 4:58
06. Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car – 5:19
07. Some Days Are Better Than Others – 4:15
08. The First Time – 3:45
09. Dirty Day – 5:24
10.1 The Wanderer – 4:44
10.2 DJ Alarm Sound – 0:27

Note: Simultaneously released on cassette, 12-inch vinyl LP, and CD by Island Records.