DISCLAIMER: These won’t be proper reviews -as if I could write those- or have interesting technical tidbits on them. These are more of a “ah, that song reminds me of…” thing. Like the part you skip on a recipe. So it goes.

Album: POP.

Release date: March 3, 1997.

Track: 10.

Moods: Ambient, Longing, Bass perfection.

You’d have to be there. 1997, January. Discotheque, their first single in 4 years, barraging every single radio station, video music station, and BBS. The hype was immense around the album, POP, and U2 tried their best, but just like it happened with Achtung Baby!, they fought, they finished stuff at the last minute and barely crossed the finish line.

However, the reception for POP was the polar opposite of Achtung Baby!, as the initial enthusiasm went away. A decade and a half of overexposure, a smug vocalist whose swagger ended up being his own downfall, and too many cooks. Those were but a few factors that made POP such a strange release.

I liked it, of course I would. I was a fan since I was a kid, and the first album of theirs I bought with my own money was the sensational Zooropa. POP was like the electronica I was listening to, so I was their target audience, for sure.

If you wear that velvet dress reminds me of airports. In the summer of 1997, I was lucky enough to travel to Germany, Poland, Czech republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. My own idea of the “iron curtain” was dispelled on that trip and the old abandoned Soviet buildings, now evanescing away with their new found economic re-routing, was a match to the “rockers meeting electronica sensibilities” of U2’s POP.

I’ll be writing a longer piece on POP soon, hopefully, as I do believe it’s an album worth re-visiting. U2 certainly thought so.

https://youtu.be/3385OS31Yio?si=1L9ruU-SI1B0Sd55

—Sam J. Valdés López