Zooropa

Zooropa
Album by U2
Released	May 1993
Recorded	The Factory, Windmill Lane Studios, and Westland Studios, Dublin, Ireland, March-May 1993
Genre	Alternative rock
Length	50 min 9 sec
Label	Island
Producer(s)	Brian Eno, The Edge
Professional reviews
AMG colspan=3 style=" background: orange;">U2 chronology
Achtung Baby (1991)	Zooropa (1993)	Original Soundtracks No. 1 (1995)

Zooropa is an album by the Irish Alternative rock band U2. Originally slated to be an EP, it was recorded between legs on the Zoo TV Tour and released in May 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."[/cirrusminor9/html/zooinfo.htm

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 Country music legend Johnny Cash on lead vocals. It lays his haggard voice over a wobbly synth line, a bizarre juxtaposition in line with the album's central irony: that the band's most synthesized and postmodern 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.

Track listing

1. "Zooropa" (6:30)
2. "Babyface" (4:00)
3. "Numb" (4:18)
4. "Lemon" (6:56)
5. "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" (4:58)
6. "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" (5:19)
7. "Some Days Are Better Than Others" (4:15)
8. "The First Time" (3:45)
9. "Dirty Day" (5:24)
10. "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.

Singles

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.

Trivia

• 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. 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.

Personnel

• Bono--lead vocals, guitar
• The Edge--guitar, piano, synthesizers, vocals
• Adam Clayton--bass guitar
• Larry Mullen, Jr.--drums, percussion, backing vocals

• Johnny Cash--lead vocal on "The Wanderer"

See also

• U2 discography
• Zoo TV Tour