Zooropa

Isn’t this album just amazing? Like, from start to finish? Okay maybe not some days , but still

Back when the bands creative juices were in full flow, and they had a set of balls. Great album

I love it. I put it 4th behind AB, TUF, and Pop. The title track is a top 5 U2 song for me.

Isn’t this album just amazing? Like, from start to finish? Okay maybe not some days , but still

True that.

Amazing from start to finish.

Hasn’t aged one bit.

Zooropa was the first album I truly loved. It's not my #1 U2 album anymore, but it's top five or so. And the title track, Lemon, Stay, and Dirty Day are all-time great U2 songs.

MASTERPIECE

Once you have been to the moons of Zooropa there is no going back.  It was the late spring or early summer of 1993 when i first heard the title track off of the album while driving my 89 IROC out in southwest Oklahoma around the Wichita mountains. 

I was aware of Achtung Baby due to saturated airplay of songs like Mysterious Ways and One - these songs had yet to really hook me for whatever reason.  The day i heard Zooropa on the radio i nearly ran the car off of the mountain.  Guess it finally all made sense by digging deeper holes in the universe and revealing grand mysteries.  I remember looking out and seeing the buffalo in the fields....eventually driving to the top of Mount Scott and just pulling off and reflecting.  The song was still in my head and i kept hearing the line "what do you want" repeated over and over.  I was mesmerized. 

Its a perfect album from start to finish - yes including Some Days and Babyface.  Its a real journey and once you've made that journey with the artist and their creation you can appreciate that its not necessarily for everyone,  and also you realize things are somehow different going forward. 

When my spirit moves on,  perhaps i will return to that mountain and visit the buffalo.  I need to ask them "what do you want" and look forward to their response.  Do they know their history,  and the history of the land in which they roam?  Uncertainty can be a guiding light....

Isn’t this album just amazing? Like, from start to finish? Okay maybe not some days , but still

A great example of what they could do when they were being artists, without care for how irrelevant radio formats would receive them, and without the time to scrap and re-do the album to death.

I love it. I put it 4th behind AB, TUF, and Pop. The title track is a top 5 U2 song for me.

There are songs on Zooropa which, were they released today and people thought it was a new band, would be considered creatively groundbreaking hits.

Zooropa is arguably U2's best album.  As an album; not every single individual song is going to mean the world taken out of context.

I say arguably, because probably that title belongs to Achtung Baby or even The Joshua Tree.  But they were in a very peculiar place in 1993-95 (yep, I am bundling Passengers in too).

Jesus, can you imagine if they had made the title/opening track a single?  A real F U single.  I mean Lemon was relatively left-field, but Zooropa? 

Zooropa is in my top 5 and better than AB IMHO. It’s certainly better than TJT. My top 5 goes something like this, in order of preference:

TUF, pride notwithstanding
October
Zooropa
AB
TJT

Honourable mentions go to War, Boy, 45% of SOE and 53% of POP. The rest of their records have so many duds on them they don’t feature.

Zooropa is in my top 5 and better than AB IMHO. It’s certainly better than TJT. My top 5 goes something like this, in order of preference:

TUF, pride notwithstanding
October
Zooropa
AB
TJT

Honourable mentions go to War, Boy, 45% of SOE and 53% of POP. The rest of their records have so many duds on them they don’t feature.

Please explain those percentages.

I'd call it one of their fun albums (along with Pop) and probably rank it 4th or 5th personally.  Great albums.  I'd like to see another fun album.

In some ways I think this might be U2's most consistent album. Each track just works and it has a bold weirdness that flows together brililantly.