Radio Free Zooropa

   Though I'm talking mostly about Pop. Couldn't resist the pun.

   So, U2. Like I mentioned yesterday, I picked up a few albums of theirs at Hastings, among other things.

   Under a Blood Red Sky, I realized, isn't an old album to me like I'd thought! Wide Awake in America, is the live U2 album I already own. Totally different. So that's three new albums, instead of two like I'd thought! But none of them All That You Can't Leave Behind, I realized today looking at them... :(

   Now, then.

   Let's talk about Pop.

u2.com

   Pop is an album a lot of people were disappointed with. Rushed production, for one. Themes surprisingly darker than its bright kid-friendly packaging would suggest. Also, when the 1990s takes itself too seriously, it takes itself too seriously, and even (and especially!) the heart-on-their-sleeves U2 get in on the act.

   But I like Pop. I've always wanted to talk about it, and I finally get the opportunity to do so now, now that I own the thing. This is exciting.

   I find the album flawless in its flaws, perfect in its imperfection. It's like how Frozen is rendered somehow better by its wandering villain, as discussed in the post linked which I finished backlogging yaay. Pop is... It's got sharp edges, like it was freshly machined, like you can see the bones and sinews, the beating heart of the U2 music factory. All the cranking unevenness, the herky jerky griminess, is, thematically appropriate, to the angle they're going for. I don't know. There's an implacability about it. Implacability? You can't... place, it? Circulate, regulate, oh no, you cannot connect it. So, yeah, I think it's good.

   But maybe that's just me. I like U2.

   I've never actually owned a physical copy of the album, before, till now! Never owned it at all, of course, though of course I know the songs, from what's provided on U2's website and elsewhere. But I have you now, Pop, for real! Let's open you up, shall we?

   It's so silvery and rainbowy! I've never had the, privilege, of opening up, say, "Prism" by Katy Perry or "Warrior" by Ke$ha (do they, still spell that with a $?), but I'd imagine it'd be very much the same kind of visual assault opening up the liner notes on those albums too, just from the covers of those albums and the style of music of those artists.*

   One thing (probably) different, Pop is... very, very '90s. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing; I can't conceive of any other decade in which "The Playboy Mansion" could've been written (being about society's religious devotion to ephemera, how there's only one "mansion" whose gates we want to pass through, and it ain't the one up above.)

   But, even in the liner notes, you can tell, Pop is still very visibly '90s. Not in a grungy way, too much, either,but... we're the 1990s, we're so cool, yeah? Unironic in all the places where irony would be better and ironic where all should be un-, in retrospect.

   And as rainbowy silvery as the liner notes are, they... You know what, it'd just be easier to illustrate.

Feast your eyes.

   The "o" in that "pop" there is indeed clipart of a soccer ball; sometimes these things do need to be expressed in words...

*I know I've spoken against those two artists in the past, but, as far as pop artists go, they're pretty good; they're terrible just as role models for young girls, is what my complaint was always about. So: parents of young girls, Katy Perry is NOT a role model. Ke$ha, DECIDEDLY THE SAME; MY GOODNESS DECIDEDLY THE SAME. But "party like nobody's watching" is definitely a message that grown-ups need to listen to more often than they do, and so, those two, for adults at least...? Still not "role models," but we could talk all day about how broken celebrities can be as human beings, and so we'll skip that convo for now, and just say, yeah: follow ur dreams!