Long Strange Trip To Pop

Yesterday a friend of mine posted a link to U2’s new single Get On Your Boots, from their new disc No Line On The Horizon, on his Facebook page. The song is interesting, kind of atypical U2, yet with a certain familiar flavor to it. A Vertigo-esque sound with a techno-dance buzz.

I listened. I liked. I bounced over to the iTunes Music Store to see if it was available as a download. (Actually, that’s a lie. First I used WireTap Studio to rip the song off of the site so I could listen to it at will, THEN I went to the  iTMS to see if it was available for purchase.) It wasn’t, yet. But my search pulled up an EP that I didn’t know existed. A disc from 1997 called Please.

 

U2's 1997 EP, Please

Please was a 5-cut EP released in the fall of 1997 containing a remixed  Please, a live version of the same song, and live versions of Where The Streets Have No Name, With Or Without You, and Staring At The Sun.

I was intrigued by both versions of Please, but a little surprised by the “remix” since I didn’t remember ever having heard the original. I bought and downloaded the entire EP, and then listened to it several times. Still, I couldn’t figure out why I’d never heard the song Please before.

After a little research I discovered that I had heard the song before, I just hadn’t remembered that I had, until I traced it back to U2’s spring 1997 release of Pop. (Feel free to roll your eyes, both at my stupidity, and for those of you inclined to read and believe music reviews, Pop. Yes, I deserve the eye roll. No, Pop does not.) Title notwithstanding, Pop was not particularly popular. In fact I seem to remember some pretty nasty reviews, especially since this disc came on the heels of U2’s manic Zooropa/Achtung Baby tours and their respective albums. Frankly, Pop sounded nothing like either of those discs.

1997's Pop

I thought I had Pop somewhere, so I dug around for it, but couldn’t find it. So, burning up yet another iTunes Christmas gift card, I downloaded Pop and began “re-” listening.

It sounded vaguely familiar. Several of the songs had been remixed and offered up as b-sides on other U2 compilation CDs, but I never remembered it being as good as it sounded now. And, since 1997, I had never listened to the disc as a whole. I was completely surprised. In fact I continue to be surprised, having listened to it now a total of about 8 times in the last 24 hours, with brief asides for sprints through Please and a presidential inauguration.

In short, Pop is amazing. Totally underrated as far as U2 discs go. Probably one of the darkest, grungiest, edgiest U2 albums ever. And yet the first three cuts stand up as some of the most danceable U2 songs I’ve ever heard, while at the same time, managing to be incredibly ugly. The entire album differs completely from nearly everything and anything else U2’s done on either side of Pop. Yes, you catch passing fragments of  Zooropa’s and Achtung Baby’s guitar and drum licks as well as whispers of what will become All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. But nothing on either side of this disc is, I think, nearly as good.