Pop

Pop was U2’s effort to rediscover that sense of adventure. A playful, eclectic, sometimes abrasive synthesis of the band’s traditional songwriting instincts and their wide array of contemporary influences, including trip-hop, rap, and breakbeat, the album was not so much a stylistic departure as an attempt to demonstrate the breadth of what U2’s style could encompass. “The basic premise was that they wanted to move on, that they couldn’t repeat themselves,” Flood, one of its producers, said of the album. “They wanted to bring in elements from the dance world and integrate them, not necessarily with the aim of turning it into a danceable album, but to synthesize a new sound.” That synthesis could be unpredictable, but that was the point. “Half the time I didn’t have a clue what was going on,” Howie B, another producer, has claimed. “As long as you were able to react to what was happening and were honest, it was really exciting.”

On the final pages of U2: At the End of the World, Bill Flanagan’s book about the making of Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and the ZooTV tour, the author finds the band back in the studio in London, experimenting with Brian Eno and very slowly easing into writing and recording after a much-needed year of break following a long stretch on the road. “They will not officially begin a new U2 album until the spring of 1995,” Flanagan writes, while hinting that the work may have already nonetheless begun. That was November of 1994. Pop, their next album, would not be released until March 1997. “We have trouble finishing things,” the Edge admitted shortly before Pop debuted, during a time of 14- to 16-hour workdays, all-night recording sessions, and constantly shifting deadlines.

During the four previous years, the band had been working on almost anything other than a studio album. Bono and the Edge had written a James Bond song for Tina Turner (“GoldenEye,” for the movie of the same name). Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr., not to be outdone, had composed a new version of the Mission: Impossible theme for Brian De Palma’s cinematic reboot of the 1960s TV series. The whole band had come together to record “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” for the Batman Forever soundtrack, and they had reunited with Brian Eno to record Original Soundtracks I, a record of theme music “for imaginary films,” released under the name Passengers. The latter is some of the most dynamic and rewarding music U2 ever wrote. Of course, at least one bandmember all but disowned it. “There’s a thin line between making interesting music and being self-indulgent,” Mullen said in 1997. “We crossed that several times on Passengers.”