Zooropa by U2: The Perfect Album
Forget the Perfecto mixes (great as they are), this is the perfect album. More morally ambiguous, grubbier, than The Joshua Tree and playing with the alienation, globalisation, disconnect and overwhelm of Achtung Baby, it still has deep spiritual truth in it. Like the bewildered cute spaceman on the cover we’re invited to peer at nationalism, relationships, humanity and culture and ponder, asking ‘who and what are we really?’
And I defy anyone not to be cheered up by the cheeky playful, yet very real, lyrics of ‘Some Days Are Better Than Others’. Just the same, enjoy the lyrics — they’re glorious:
“Some days are sulky, some days have a grin
And some days have bouncers and won’t let you in”
Yet because this is U2, it doesn’t stay grubby and isolated — but ends with a gospel flavoured ‘The First Time’. Almost parable-like with stories about struggle and love are pared together. By extreme contrast, we get to hear the Edge sing in the beautifully droning ‘Numb’ — barraging us, advert-like, with all the things we shouldn’t do. It’s like a negative version of ‘Sunscreen’ — bleak, angsty, strict and hopeless, and yet just by listening, we can learn what not to do on an extensive consumer list. Enjoy the irony…
‘Dirty Day’ again has extraordinary lyrics and switches between emotional whispers and angry screams. Yet it discusses ugly hereditary/family pass downs, absent fathers who still leave an unwanted legacy with their children and gets us thinking about the society we’re making. ‘I’m in you/
More so when they put me in the ground’. Plus, the ending is beautiful.
And when you think it can’t get any better or more profound, they draft in Johnny Cash! Though they do lurch into creepy with ‘Babyface’, before heading to noire-ish with ‘Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car’, then bounce back to the sublime with the delicate slow salsa of ‘Lemon’. Here too is sweeping, soaring, tragic romance in ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!)’, matched by the atmospheric echoes of Larry Mullen’s drumming.
Therefore, to quote Bono. when life gives you mud, plant flowers in it..
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