U2 's ran between
1997 and
1998 in support of their album ''
Pop ''. Popmart was a parody of
Consumerism ; the band kicked off the tour by holding a press conference at a
Kmart store.
The show was designed by frequent U2 collaborator
Willie Williams , who had also designed their previous tour,
Zoo TV .
The stage included a 100-foot tall golden
Lemon . Drummer
Larry Mullen Jr. joked that "it could have been an artichoke, but we wanted a more practical fruit."
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The performances began in the same style as a boxing match, with the band (heavily guarded with suited men) walking through the crowd towards the end of the b-stage while the "Popmart mix" of
M 's "
Pop Muzik " was played. The show proper usually opened with "
MOFO ".
As the group played, the audience would be bombarded with images and colours, all designed towards the show's ironic embrace of tackiness and ''pop''-ular culture. The band would walk out from inside the giant lemon during the shows' encore (although it failed to open three times, in
Oslo ,
Sydney and
Tokyo ).
The show's infamously bad, poorly rehearsed opening night in
Las Vegas (during which the band messed their timing on the song "
Staring At The Sun ", stopped playing partway through, and then started over) contributed to the backlash against both the album and the tour. Nonetheless, the quality of the band's performances improved greatly by the time they began the second leg in
Europe (evidenced by the ''
PopHeart '' EP, which features three songs from the first European show in
Rotterdam ). The appearance at the
Belfast Botanic Gardens was U2's first show in
Belfast in over ten years.
Despite its cleverness and some positive critical response, many fans felt alienated by the shows; new material from the ''Pop'' album didn't go down as well as U2 might have hoped, and people just didn't seem to get the joke. U2 had dressed as
The Village People in the video for the first single from ''Pop'', and their willingness to mock their serious image continued during Popmart. They wore cowboy outfits on stage, and performances regularly featured a
Karaoke slot, in which
The Edge would sing
The Monkees ' "Daydream Believer" or similar song against a cheap karaoke CD, complete with lyrics shown on the giant screen.
Like Zoo TV, Popmart was another huge success in terms of revenue, although it was not profitable for the band. Despite taking $80 million in revenue, the show cost $100 million to run. Drummer Mullen Jr. said that the only thing that saved the band from financial ruin was
T-shirt sales.
Among the tour's highlights was a heavily emotional (and heavily bootlegged) show in
Sarajevo where they were the first major band to perform after the war. They promised to play into the city following the controversial Satellite link-ups in the
Zoo TV Tour during wartime. They were arranged by aid worker
Bill Carter and ordinary people were interviewed about their experiences of the War. 50,000 people attended and effort was made to make sure all the ethnic groups were present. There was no major incident. One news story said: "For two magical hours, the rock band U2 achieved what warriors, politicians and diplomats could not: They united Bosnia." Trains were running for the first time to enable people to see the concert and they again stopped after the concert. According to Mullen Jr., "there's no doubt that that is an experience I will never forget for the rest of my life. And if I had to spend 20 years in the band just to play that show, and have done that, I think it would have been worthwhile."
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