Zooropa

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Zooropa

Studio album by U2
Released	July 1993
Recorded	The Factory, Windmill Lane Studios, and Westland Studios, Dublin, Ireland, March-May 1993
Genre	Alternative Rock
Length	51:15
Label	Island
Producer(s)	Flood, Brian Eno and The Edge
All Music Guide link Robert Christgau (B-) link Rolling Stone link Sputnik Music link
U2 chronology
Achtung Baby (1991)	Zooropa (1993)	Melon: Remixes for Propaganda (1995)

Zooropa is the eighth studio 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 by Island Records as a full-length album.

1 History
2 Track listing
3 Singles
4 Live
5 Personnel
6 See also
7 External links

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. In fact, though Brian Eno's primary credit is as a producer on this album, he also appears as a performer/contributor on several of the songs, including "Babyface", and "Lemon".

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 "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."[1]

The dreamy German disco of "Lemon", sung by Bono in a longing falsetto and The Edge amidst waves of almost unrecognizably distorted guitar, documents man's futile attempts to preserve time through technology, as well as the importance of private voyeurism to a band living in a constant spotlight (the song was actually about a film-to-video transfer received by Bono from some family friends; in the video, his mother was seen wearing a lemon-yellow dress, hence the title and subject matter):

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 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.

"Zooropa" – 6:31
"Babyface" – 4:01
"Numb" – 4:20
"Lemon" – 6:58
"Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" – 4:58
"Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" – 5:20
"Some Days Are Better Than Others" – 4:17
"The First Time" – 3:45
"Dirty Day" – 5:24
"The Wanderer" featuring Johnny Cash – 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.

There is also a "hidden track" after "The Wanderer" featuring an alarm going off; that is the alarm that some radio disc jockeys hear when there is 10 seconds of dead air. Because of this, track 10 lasts 5:41, while "The Wanderer" ends 4:44 into the track.

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. [2] They would be finished and released later in the decade.

"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 1990s, anticipating the commonplace release of DVD singles by the latter part of the 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. Directed by Kevin Godley, the 'Numb' music video is often regarded as one of U2's best.

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.

Much of the album was performed on the Zoo TV Tour, with the exceptions of "Some Days Are Better Than Others" and "The Wanderer."

"Lemon" and "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" were performed with Bono in his MacPhisto persona, during encores of the Zoomerang Leg of the tour. "Dirty Day" was also played on this leg after the acoustic set. "Numb" was performed with The Edge playing guitar and on lead vocals, with Larry Mullen Jr. performing backing vocals while drumming. "Zooropa" and "Babyface" were performed three times each, at the same shows on the Zooropa leg, but were cut out of the setlist after the band didn't feel they sounded right live. "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" was performed acoustically for the Zooropa and Zoomerang legs.

"The First Time" has been played multiple times on the Vertigo Tour, and "The Wanderer" was performed by the band in a tribute to Johnny Cash, with Bono taking the vocals Cash once held. "Some Days Are Better Than Others" is the only Zooropa track not performed live.

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

Other musicians who contributed to the album:

Johnny Cash - lead vocal on "The Wanderer"

Discography entry at U2 Wanderer - Comprehensive details on various editions, cover scans, lyrics, and more.
U2 tours overview at U2-Vertigo-Tour.com - Includes setlists for every date on the ZooTV Tour.
U2MoL - Contains fan interpretations and interview excerpts for each song.
Album lyrics Album lyrics for Zooropa.