U2 - Zooropa
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Free Music Notes for Zooropa
Free Music Review: Get Your Head Out of the Mud Baby
Hit: 5 Stars
It's almost comical to read a review like the one Warchild wrote. "Close, but no guitar". Hilarious. Of course, if anyone had been listening to Achtung Baby at all, they could have predicted U2's sonic shift. Alas, some of us still want the "old U2", a phrase which makes me shudder every time I hear it. "I Will Follow" "Gloria" "Sunday Bloody Sunday" "Pride" "Still Haven't Found" "Streets" "Bullet" "Desire"
What a roll call of wonderful guitar-driven rock and roll that defined a sound in the 80's.
But U2, like all human beings, found time to grow up and expand.
After the success of AB, while still on tour, U2 took a 6 week break, ostensibly to record a four or five track EP before the last leg of their tour. Like most of U2's ideas, this one grew to a full length album.
And they hit one out of the park.
1)Zooropa---simply the most foreboding opening to a U2 song ever, before Edge's GUITAR kicks in with a sinister wah wah effect. Bono's disorientation is clear from the outset, as he places Zooropa square in the middle of advertising slogans.
2)Babyface---A sweet high tech love song, presumably sung to a woman on a TV screen. Ingenious. Sorry there wasn't the Edge's guitar effect from 1983's War album, but he just couldn't fit it in around all that soul, so he settles for cascading it down like icicles.
3)Numb---The Edge shines with a blistering industrial GUITAR sound as he pays homage to "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with his spoken word rap about conformity.
4)Lemon---The musical highlight of the album. Adam and Larrys' rhythm section is amazingly groovy, and Bono sings in his falsetto about "slowly slipping under" and "holding onto nothing". Edge replaces a guitar that would be out of place with a keyboard that fits perfectly.
5)Stay---Beautiful ballad, one of the best U2 has ever done.
6)Daddy's Gonna Pay---This is to Zooropa what "The Fly" was to AB. U2 rips apart their fabric with a song where the GUITAR slams you sonically and the Drums and bass are extremely compact.
7)Some Days---A little R and B number from the boys that merges several sounds they haven't used before. Adam's bass line propels this song.
8)The First Time---A haunting number in the vein of "Running to Stand Still" with a beautiful piano melody.
9)Dirty Day---Another beautful song, driven by haunting keyboards, until the end when Edge's GUITAR takes it into the stratosphere.
10)The Wanderer---Anybody care to f*** with Johnny Cash? Didn't think so.
Free Music Review: In the Name of LOVE...Do not pick up Zooropa!
Hit: 1 Stars
For many years now, I've been a diehard U2 fan. I discovered u2 during senior year at UCLA. This was back during the War Tour period. I managed to get tickets to one of their gigs in Philadelpia...I came home that night with the tune Sunday Bloody Sunday echoing in my head. I had experienced a new and provocative sound in rock...Ever since then, I have made it my personal mission to buy every album subsequently released by u2. I picked up Boy. WOW. I picked up The Unforgetable Fire. WOW. I picked up Joshua Tree. WOW. I picked up Rattle and Hum. WOW. The same goes for Wide Awake in America, Achtung Baby, All That You Can't Leave Behind and their newest CD, How to Dismantle Atomic Bomb.
I remember the day that I picked up Zooropa.
The phrase 'vomiting' comes to mind.
Why Bono, why? why couldn't you remain true to the music and the style that you portrayed in the 80s. The fanbase was there during Zooropa. If you had put together something of a masterpiece or even something lacking that luster, we would have paid the $200+ for tickets to your shows, proving our undying devotion. We would have gone days and night, shouting "Desire" or "Walk Away".
Instead we listened as the greatest band on earth bludgeoned away all implications of greatness with what can be described as little more than aggravating electronic beeps and whooshes pieced together to drive the dedicated fans to criminal insanity. What is this?
Sorry, Bono. Close...but no guitar.
Just because you are the greatest frontman of the greatest band in the world, it does not give you the right to degrade rock n roll to the mediums of electronic warble and drug-enhanced music. Perhaps if I had been on Mary Jane, I would have found this interesting.
What happened to the musical talent? Why did you think that the loyal fans did not want another masterpiece like Joshua Tree or War? I don't care if Madonna's doing it...I don't care if Radiohead's doing it...
U2 has no excuse for emulating CRAP!
It's a wonder that we came back in record numbers for ATYCLB...
Never again...
In the name of love...
If you are thinking of buying Zooropa, go ahead.
Listen to it.
Be appalled.
Join the millions of loyal fans who say, WHY?
Free Music Review: Taking A Risk
Hit: 3 Stars
I have to give credit to U2 for being creative and developing different styles in their music. Achtung Baby is a true classic recording. However, the band decided to experiment with techno beats and spooky synthesizer and guitar effects. And you know what, it works somewhat.
Through all the catchy stylings, the songs are a bit hit and miss. I like the title track, Lemon, The Wanderer, and several others. However memorable melodies are a little bit thin. Nonetheless, this is a groove oriented recording and I can certainly appreciate what it brings to the table. Just do not make this the first CD you own by U2.
Free Music Review: Definitely good U2 -- an experiment that works
Hit: 4 Stars
This is my second review of Zooropa. I am disposing of my original review because I now feel quite different about this album, thanks to repeated listenings and additional insight from other reviewers here who were able to get me to wake up and realize the genius in this particular piece of art. For truth's sake, I absolutely must submit this edited version.
I originally stated that this album was "not essential" in the average U2 fan's library. I insisted that the "novelty wears off" after listening to it for a while. Well, now I'm just going to be blunt. This album is better than All That You Can't Leave Behind, and it may even be better than How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (two of U2's most recent offerings).
Actions speak louder than words, and I find myself listening to this album (and genuinely enjoying it as I listen) quite a bit more often than ATYCLB and Bomb. It just clicked with me all of a sudden -- I finally "get it." Put simply, this album is fresh, innovative, and exciting, and it does a wonderful job of bringing us further into the uncharted, murky territories that we were introduced to with Achtung Baby.
Some of my original contentions and descriptions still stand true (because I didn't *completely* dismiss the entire album in my first review), so I will repeat them again here. The opening of this disc is suspenseful, tense, and eventually turns into one heck of a crazed rocker. "Lemon" is upbeat, colorful, and mystifying. "Dirty Day" is an aptly-named killer song that will stun you with its simplicity. "The First Time" is soulfully deep, and there's even a guest appearance from the late Johnny Cash to be found in the hauntingly touching "The Wanderer."
I can now even say some good things about some of the other tracks on this CD, which is something I didn't do the first time around. "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" is full of yearning heartache, "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" will pound your senses on all eight rock 'n' roll cylinders, and the fun and catchy melodies and lyrics in "Babyface" and "Some Days Are Better Than Others" allow the listener to take a soothing break from the frenzied chaos of the rest of the album.
At this point, there's actually very little about this album that I *don't* like. Take "Numb," for example. It's really kind of a neat song, but its robotic personality and mumbled lyrics has a tendency to sometimes annoy me. "Some Days" is a great track, but in my opinion a better effort should have been put forth into providing its guitar solo. Still, these minor problems don't ruin the fact that this is a fine compilation of futuristic pop music.
I will say it again, though: This is the U2 album that leaves you saying to yourself, "What the heck?" That, however, is mostly a good thing. I admit, I'm giving Zooropa four stars -- not five -- but that's only because this album isn't *quite* as epic as some of their other masterpieces like The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. In addition, one of my original complaints was that some of the material in a way sounds as if it was left over from AB (and my understanding is that there might be some truth to that). What it amounts to, though, is that with this disc U2 needs to be commended for continuing to evolve a more daring sound and artistic persona, and I no longer feel reluctant to recommend this album to anyone. Pick it up -- you probably won't regret it.
Free Music Review: Welcome to The Low Period
Hit: 3 Stars
Maybe all that time with Brian Eno made U2 decide they should emulate David Bowie in Berlin. Maybe "The Fly' in Bono's character bag got the better of him. Whatever the case may be, "Zooropa" is the most outside the station CD in the U2 library.
The band completely flys off the track from the very first song. The title track fades slowly in with found radio/TV noise (a remnant from the Popmart tour, one supposes) before turning in a tossed salad mish-mosh of a lyric. Lines like "be all that you can be" and "eat to stay slimmer" sound like the Bowie trick of tearing out phrases and just assembling them at random. But instead of having any meaningful things to say, the first half of "Zooropa" reads like Bono just tore the headline banners from magazine adverts and pinched them together. (The more explosive second stage is far more interesting.) For a band known for its cutting lyrics, frankly, it feels like a cheat.
For that matter, so did the album's first single, the techno-rap "Numb." If you've ever seen U2 in concert, you'd know that The Edge offers a lot to the band's vocals. You'd never guess that from "Numb." It made for an interesting contrast to the band's usual charismatic crusader singing, but the electronic filtering on Edge's voice, again, seemed a bit odd.
Their are some really good songs on "Zooropa," saving the album from falling below my 3-stars-for-average rating. Both "Stay" and "The First Time" are classic U2 material. Bono's falsetto in "Lemon" made it a classic club track. The album closer, "The Wanderer," took an even greater chance by bringing in Johnny Cash (who was on the cusp of his "American Recordings" comeback at the time) to add his preacher baritone to U2's tale of a man seeking redemption. As far out as "Zooropa" was for the band, moving that far left of center brought an otherwise unfabulous album to a genius close.
I have always maintained the "Zooropa's" main flaw was that it didn't seem like a finished album. Coming out relatively quickly after "Achtung Baby" and the band's reinventing itself for a new decade, songs like "Babyface" "Numb" and "Dirty Day" had an air of incompleteness about them. Sort of like the band just dumped off tracks at the studio and told Eno, Flood, et al., to finish up a disc so they could get back on with touring. While U2 may have really wanted "Zooropa" to be their "Lodger-to-Heroes-to-Low," it falls short of the mark and barely holds a candle to their finest work.