'' is an album by the
Irish Rock band
U2 . Originally slated to be an
EP , it was recorded between legs on the
Zoo TV Tour and released in July
1993 (see
1993 In Music ) by
Island Records as a full-length album.
It was very much an "
Alternative Rock " album in the climate of 1993. In
North America ,
Grunge was at its peak. While contemporaries
R.E.M. latched onto this trend with their distortion-filled ''
Monster '', U2 released an album without angst or even a single guitar solo. In
Europe ,
BritPop was beginning to conquer the charts, yet ''Zooropa'' owed more to the experimentation of
David Bowie and
Brian Eno than to the melodic pop of
The Beatles and
The Kinks .
''Zooropa'' was a successful release--perhaps riding the wave of popularity started by ''
Achtung Baby '' and the Zoo TV Tour--winning a
Grammy Award for
Best Alternative Music Album the year of its release and spending two weeks at #1 on the
Billboard 200 despite lacking a strong single. It has subsequently sold more than 7 million copies worldwide.
As the title suggests, the album has a distinctly
European texture (in contrast to the distinctly American roots of their late eighties work), continuing the band's experimentation with
Electronica ,
Techno , and other predominantly European forms of music. Heavy on samples and irony, it also ties the "media overload" themes of the Zoo TV Tour into the context of a post-
Berlin Wall Europe. The lyrics seem fascinated with the way
Technology unites as well as separates us. The spacey title track, for instance--laced with ad slogans like "Better by design" and "
Vorsprung Durch Technik "--paints a babel-filled vision of a single Europe united by satellite television.
But largely, the album's vision of technology is a cynical one. On the techno-rap "Numb", guitarist
The Edge's drones a list of "dos and don'ts," overwhelmed by a noisy backdrop of arcade sounds and "fat lady vocals." The Edge notes that the inspiration for this song came from "that sense that you were getting bombarded with so much that you actually were finding yourself shutting down and unable to respond because there was so much imagery and information being thrown at you."
{Link without Title}
The dreamy
German Disco of "Lemon"--sung by
Bono in a longing falsetto amidst waves of almost unrecognizably distorted guitar--documents man's futile attempts to preserve time through technology:
:A man makes a picture
:A moving picture
:Through the light projected
:He can see himself up close
:A man captures colour
:A man likes to stare
:He turns his money into light to look for her
The songs conclude that we should not get so caught up in technology--and with it, the perceived need to know, keep, and broadcast everything--that we lose sight of ourselves and each other. The closing track, "The Wanderer", features album would be a condemnation of technology. The song's narrator wanders through a soulless world "in search of experience", ultimately finding meaning in the spiritual rather than the superficial.
#"
Zooropa " – 6:30
#"
Babyface " – 4:00
#"
Numb " – 4:18
#"
Lemon " – 6:56
#"
Stay (Faraway, So Close!) " – 4:58
#"
Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car " – 5:19
#"Some Days Are Better Than Others" – 4:15
#"
The First Time " – 3:45
#"
Dirty Day " – 5:24
#"
The Wanderer " – 4:44
Music by U2, words by Bono except "Dirty Day" (by Bono and the Edge) and "Numb" (by the Edge).
Produced by Brian Eno and the Edge.
"Numb" was an unlikely choice for a first single, and was released in an even more unlikely format, being released exclusively on
VHS as a "
Video Single ". Though
Madonna had already released "
Justify My Love " as a video single in
1990 following the blacklisting of that video by
MTV , it was still quite a progressive move for the early 90s, anticipating the commonplace release of
DVD Single s by the best part of a decade. The single very much reflects the avant-gardism and obsession with multimedia that marked both the album and the accompanying
Zoo TV world tour.
The band also released two more conventional singles from the album. "Lemon" received a limited release in North America, Australia, and Japan, and "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" was released worldwide.
- The names of three unfinished songs from the sessions--"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me", "Wake Up, Dead Man", and "If You Wear That Velvet Dress"--appear superimposed on the album cover. {Link without Title} They would be finished and released later in the decade.
- "Numb" features three members of U2 on vocals: the Edge on lead and Bono and Larry Mullen, Jr., on background.
