Bono was always irked that Elvis sang a romantic, "on one knee" version, while saw the singer as this sad, defeated person coming apart at the seams.

@avclub-d542a3419c3ad57206a96bcc86155ebc:disqus "When I Look at the World" was so insufferably boring, I couldn't believe it had made it on the album.

Go listen to the version from Paris in 1987.

And now we get songs like "Unknown Caller". The whole section of No Line it occupies represents the nadir of U2.

Yeeeeaaaah. The K-Mart concert was just so sad in that they were obviously trying so hard to look like they weren't trying so hard.

@avclub-230e46d19fe78a6c8dc715659a7188d7:disqus That's the best description of "Miami" I've ever heard.

It's really worth a listen. It's not a very lucid album, the first three tracks are all electro weirdness, followed by four songs that either slow-burn or soar, but still feel kinda like a hazy, late summer afternoon in LA.

@avclub-d71760750778a95386b703f5c9e474f0:disqus Adam and Larry have always been about traditional rock. They were pushing hard in that direction after Rattle and Hum, while Edge was coming into the studio raving about Acid House, NIN and My Bloody Valentine.

And an article on Pop would be fab, too. Just sayin' ;)

HTDAAB is the sound of the band running out of gas. They had all of this positive buzz and energy after the ATYCLB album / tour and it just fizzled. The fact it took longer than the break between Pop and ATYCLB made it sting a lot worse.

They're really, really scared about making an album nobody cares about. Bono has been very vocal about it since around 2010.

It's funny, when the album first came out, everybody LOVED The Playboy Mansion and hated, hated, hated Miami.

Terrible Dad Rock along with some awesome, spacey tracks near the end.

He was brought in to produce Pop, but bailed after a year.

In Anthony DeCurtis's excellent book on the band, he mentions how relieved they were when it became apparent that they weren't going to make an album of HMTMKMKM-like songs.

Do You Feel Loved should have been the lead single (and yes, I know that it sucked live, but let's set that aside for a moment). It was the moment where everything they were trying to do came together. Had it come out first, I think initial perceptions of the album would have been far different.

Pop had some pretty weird tracks and even the most "normal" ones had bits of weirdness running through them. It didn't feel tacked-on or deliberate, but there was something really off about everything, like you had slipped into a dream about a U2 album.

I liked it better in the original German.

All the cats are long dead
The director perished first
Claws upon the shoulder

"…there’s something apocalyptic about text-speak as well. It’s the kind of sub-ruination of our language. It feels like the disassembling of our language, or something like that."