The Albums That Made Me

U2 - Pop

The year was 1997. I had only recently gotten my hands on my very own dual cassette boombox with -gasp- a CD player. I bought it with my own money, but when my dad brought it home for me, he also gave me my first CD, which was an instrumental world music album. Not what I would have picked, but I was grateful for it and listened to it regularly. But soon after, one of my good friends, a music fanatic and future bandmate, gifted me two albums for my birthday. One was The Fat Of The Land by The Prodigy, and the other was U2's Pop. That's what I'm going to talk about today.

There's a very interesting story behind how Pop was produced and what they were trying to accomplish, but I'm not going to get into it here. I suggest reading through the Wikipedia entry on it. Once you know what went into making the album, it makes a lot more sense how they ended up with the final product.

I had a basic familiarity with U2 from what they played on the radio, primarily the older stuff from Joshua Tree, Boy, and War. Pop was a very different animal. It's kind of the black sheep in their discography, which isn't surprising since it's a pretty big departure from their usual sound. I think of it similarly to Load by Metallica. It's a great album, but it's not what you expect from the band. And I have no problem with that. I feel like you're allowed to grow and change as a band. Unless you're Slayer or AC/DC. In which case, just keep rewriting the same songs over and over again.

I used to play a lot of computer games back then, and Quake was in heavy rotation at the time. One of the cool things about that game was that it was made to play certain tracks of the soundtrack from the game disc depending on the level. But you didn't need the CD to run the game itself, so you could actually put in whatever music CD you wanted, and it would change tracks accordingly. So I would frequently listen to Pop while playing Quake. It's a weird combo. Definitely not the intended vibe of the game. But hearing Mofo while blasting monsters works. You should try it sometime.

Another core memory for me was hearing Staring At The Sun at school. We had a TV on the wall in the auditorium at my high school that would play during free periods. It was always on MTV, and Staring At The Sun was on heavy rotation at the time. I was early into my days as a musician, and the lead guitar part always intrigued me. I had no idea how he got it.

Listening back to it objectively, it's a very disjointed album. The songs are kind of all over the place. But I actually appreciate that. I enjoy the variety. And it still holds up for me today. Miami and The Playboy Mansion are the weak links as far as I'm concerned, but they're not inherently bad songs. I just don't resonate with them.

It's hard to choose my top tracks for this one, but here goes:

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