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 range of latest influences, together with trip-hop, rap, and breakbeat, the album was not a lot a stylistic departure as an try and show 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, one in every of its producers, mentioned of the album. “They needed to usher in components from the dance world and combine them, not essentially with the purpose 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 occurring,” Howie B, one other producer, has claimed. “So long as you had been in a position to react to what was occurring and had been trustworthy, 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 12 months of break following a protracted stretch on the highway. “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’ve hassle ending issues,” the Edge admitted shortly earlier than Pop debuted, throughout a time of 14- to 16-hour workdays, all-night recording classes, and consistently shifting deadlines.
In the course of the 4 earlier years, the band had been engaged on nearly something apart from a studio album. Bono and the Edge had written a James Bond music 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 Sixties TV sequence. The entire band had come collectively to file “Maintain Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” for the Batman Eternally soundtrack, they usually had reunited with Brian Eno to file Authentic Soundtracks I, a file of theme music “for imaginary movies,” launched below the identify Passengers. The latter is a few of the most dynamic and rewarding music U2 ever wrote. In fact, at the very least one bandmember all however disowned it. “There’s a skinny line between making fascinating music and being self-indulgent,” Mullen mentioned in 1997. “We crossed that a number of occasions on Passengers.”
