Pop was U2’s effort to rediscover that sense of journey. A playful, eclectic, typically abrasive synthesis of the band’s conventional songwriting instincts and their big selection of latest influences, together with trip-hop, rap, and breakbeat, the album was not a lot a stylistic departure as an try and display the breadth of what U2’s model 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, stated of the album. “They needed to herald parts from the dance world and combine them, not essentially with the goal of turning it right into a danceable album, however to synthesize a brand new sound.” That synthesis might 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 have been capable of react to what was taking place and have been trustworthy, it was actually thrilling.”
On the ultimate pages of U2: On the Finish of the World, Invoice Flanagan’s guide concerning 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 could have already nonetheless begun. That was November of 1994. Pop, their subsequent album, wouldn’t be launched till March 1997. “Now we have hassle ending issues,” the Edge admitted shortly earlier than Pop debuted, throughout a time of 14- to 16-hour workdays, all-night recording periods, and always shifting deadlines.
Through the 4 earlier years, the band had been engaged on virtually something apart from a studio album. Bono and the Edge had written a James Bond tune 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: Not possible theme for Brian De Palma’s cinematic reboot of the Nineteen 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 beneath the identify Passengers. The latter is among the most dynamic and rewarding music U2 ever wrote. In fact, not less than one bandmember all however disowned it. “There’s a skinny line between making fascinating music and being self-indulgent,” Mullen stated in 1997. “We crossed that a number of instances on Passengers.”