A footnote to this last node:
Agreed that
Actung Baby seems to have come out of nowhere; the moody experimentation, the distorted, gnarled guitar aesthetic, the emphasis on interpersonal relations (and,
especially, upon sexual relations) over anthemic political or love songs: there was no hint of this anywhere in the entire back catalogue of U2.
BUT
To consider
Zooropa a failure is deeply unfair by any and all standards. Critically, it was their best-recieved album (for good reason, more on this later) outside, perhaps,
The Joshua Tree. Commercially, it moved its fair share of units (though perhaps not compared to
Actung Baby) and spawned the band's most imaginative and successful tour:
Zoo TV - where
Bono's now infamous
Macphisto character found its origin.
This album was imagined
completely on the road. Meaning that any of its songs found their origin outside of the studio entirely. That U2 would produce a decent album, let alone a truly great album, was not anticipated.
But they produced a masterpiece. Some people slagged
Zooropa off (as they would subsequently do for
POP) as merely U2's fling with dance music. This is unfair for several reasons. First of all, the band had been flirting with dance rythyms, really, since
War - just check out the backbeat to
Seconds.
Second of all, the emotional power of the album itself. As one reviewer put it, the opening moments of the first track alone demonstrated that U2 could wring maximum raw emotion out of a mere note or two.
Witness the power of the themes that run through the album:
love,
power,
sex,
death,
God,
art. Bono was perhaps at his most subtle as a lyricist when he approached this album, and it shows in his careful, almost opaque handling of difficult subjects as pornography (
Babyface),
ennui (
Numb,
Daddy's Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car), and most difficultly of all, suicide, in the immensely powerful closer
The Wanderer.
Witness the sheer intregue of the songs themselves: the moody,
ambient, powerful opening of
Zooropa, the operatic, emotive texture of
Lemon, the self-consciousless nostalgia of
Stay, the sheer beauty of
Bono and
The Edge's harmonies on
The Wanderer (not to mention
Johnny Cash's stunning lead vocals), and the emotional vulnerability of
The First Time - U2's most romantic song
ever.
Finally, witness the band's quenchless desire for experimentation and inventiveness. Two songs feature lead vocals by singers other than Bono; only one other U2 album has risked this, and one on
Zooropa became a hit single:
Numb. There are tape loops buried into
Numb,
Bukowski references in
Dirty Day, innovative sampling and production throughout -- the result of the band's growing intimacy with
Brian Eno as co-producer.
Daddy's Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car starts off with
Russian propoganda music.
In conclusion, I submit that
Zooropa reflects not a band groping with an artistic failure, but in production of one of its most remarkable and imaginative successes. Rarely do musical talent, emotional expression, and desire for experimentation intersect on single songs; on Zooropa, each and every tune manages to reflect all three.