Pop was U2’s effort to rediscover that sense of journey. A playful, eclectic, generally abrasive synthesis of the band’s conventional songwriting instincts and their big selection of up to date influences, together with trip-hop, rap, and breakbeat, the album was not a lot a stylistic departure as an try to exhibit the breadth of what U2’s type might embody. “The fundamental premise was that they needed to maneuver on, that they couldn’t repeat themselves,” Flood, certainly one of its producers, mentioned of the album. “They needed to usher in parts from the dance world and combine them, not essentially with the intention of turning it right into a danceable album, however to synthesize a brand new sound.” That synthesis could possibly be unpredictable, however that was the purpose. “Half the time I didn’t have a clue what was happening,” Howie B, one other producer, has claimed. “So long as you had been capable of react to what was taking place and had been sincere, it was actually thrilling.”
On the ultimate pages of U2: On the Finish of the World, Invoice Flanagan’s guide in regards to the making of Achtung Child, Zooropa, and the ZooTV tour, the creator finds the band again within the studio in London, experimenting with Brian Eno and really slowly easing into writing and recording after a much-needed yr of break following an extended stretch on the street. “They won’t formally start a brand new U2 album till the spring of 1995,” Flanagan writes, whereas hinting that the work might have already nonetheless begun. That was November of 1994. Pop, their subsequent album, wouldn’t be launched till March 1997. “We now have hassle ending issues,” the Edge admitted shortly earlier than Pop debuted, throughout a time of 14- to 16-hour workdays, all-night recording periods, and continuously shifting deadlines.
Throughout the 4 earlier years, the band had been engaged on virtually something aside from a studio album. Bono and the Edge had written a James Bond tune for Tina Turner (“GoldenEye,” for the film of the identical identify). Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr., to not be outdone, had composed a brand new model of the Mission: Inconceivable theme for Brian De Palma’s cinematic reboot of the Nineteen Sixties TV collection. The entire band had come collectively to report “Maintain Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” for the Batman Ceaselessly soundtrack, they usually had reunited with Brian Eno to report Authentic Soundtracks I, a report of theme music “for imaginary movies,” launched beneath the identify Passengers. The latter is a number of the most dynamic and rewarding music U2 ever wrote. After all, at the least one bandmember all however disowned it. “There’s a skinny line between making attention-grabbing music and being self-indulgent,” Mullen mentioned in 1997. “We crossed that a number of occasions on Passengers.”
