U2 began writing and recording Zooropa in Dublin in February 1993, during a six-month break between legs of the Zoo TV Tour. The record was originally intended as an EP to promote the "Zooropa" leg of the tour that was to begin in May 1993, but during the sessions, the group decided to extend the record to a full-length album. [1] Pressed for time, U2 wrote and recorded at a rapid pace, with songs originating from many sources, including leftover material from the Achtung Baby sessions. The album was not completed in time for the tour's resumption, forcing the band to travel between Dublin and their tour destinations in May to complete mixing and recording. Once in a while, the album receives some favorable retrospectives — here’s a semi-ironic piece by Rob Harvilla in Spin for its 20th anniversary, an occasion also commemorated by Stereogum — but it’s mostly an afterthought in the U2 pantheon. Boy was a promising first album, War made them stars, The Joshua Tree became one of the biggest records in history, and Achtung Baby wasn’t far behind it. The band began the Zoo TV Tour in February 1992 in support of Achtung Baby. In contrast to the austere stage setups of previous U2 tours, Zoo TV was an elaborate multimedia event. It satirised television and the viewing public's overstimulation by attempting to instill "sensory overload" in its audience. [2] [22] The stage featured large video screens that showed visual effects, random video clips from pop culture, and flashing text phrases. Live satellite link-ups, channel surfing, crank calls, and video confessionals were incorporated into the shows. [114] Bono is credited as the sole lyricist for eight of the ten songs, while the Edge received sole credit for "Numb". The duo share credits for the lyrics to "Dirty Day". Technology is a common theme on Zooropa, inspired by the group's experiences on the Zoo TV Tour. Jon Pareles wrote that the songs are about how "media messages infect characters' souls", [30] while music journalist David Browne said the songs are concerned with "emotional fracturing in the techno-tronic age". [31] Critic Robert Hilburn interpreted the album as U2 probing into what they saw as the "disillusionment of the modern age". [40] Pride, Dominic (11 June 1994). "Ivors Spotlight Take That's Barlow". Billboard. Vol.106, no.24. p.38.

Zooropa - 30th Anniversary - (Vinyl LP) | Rough Trade U2 - Zooropa - 30th Anniversary - (Vinyl LP) | Rough Trade

Sixty-Nine Things You May Not Have Known About Life in the Zoo". Propaganda. No.17. U2 World Service. Winter 1992–1993. Zooropa was released on July 5, 1993, and then it just sort of ... disappeared. It sold merely 2 million copies in the United States — a steep fall from Achtung Baby’s 8 million or The Joshua Tree’s 10 — and its singles mostly failed to chart on mainstream radio. But it feels earned, in a world just escaping from the Cold War and only just beginning to understand the new age, the digital age, that it was entering. These guys saw it and they recognized it, even if they were as perplexed as anyone about what you were supposed to do about it. Their only real conclusion is to do the same thing you did before: You miss your mom, you get mad at your dad, you fall in love, you get high, sometimes you wonder what the point of all this really is. But you don’t give up. You keep living. It just sounds a little bit different. Island Records and Universal Music have announced the release of Zooropa - 30th Anniversary Limited Edition Gatefold, a transparent yellow vinyl pressing celebrating three decades of U2's Grammy-winning eighth studio album. In October 2011, Achtung Baby was reissued to commemorate its 20th anniversary; CD copies of Zooropa were included in the "Super Deluxe" and "Über Deluxe" editions of the release. [72] Continuing a campaign by U2 to reissue all of their records on vinyl, Zooropa was re-released on two 180-gram vinyl records on 27 July 2018. [73] Remastered under the Edge's direction, the reissue included two remixes to commemorate the album's 25th anniversary: "Lemon (The Perfecto Mix)" and "Numb (Gimme Some More Dignity Mix)".The album cover features Achtung Baby‘s “Astrobaby” and recreates the European flag on top of images of famous European leaders. a b Rosen, Craig (19 June 1993). "PLG Flies into Action With U2 Promo Plan". Billboard. Vol.105, no.25. pp.1, 89. a b c d e f g Tingen, Paul (March 1994). "ROBBIE ADAMS: U2's Achtung Baby & Zooropa". Sound on Sound. Archived from the original on 5 July 2015 . Retrieved 8 January 2010.

U2 announce Zooropa 30th anniversary bonanza - RTÉ

Thomas, Peyton (20 December 2020). "U2: Zooropa Album Review". Pitchfork . Retrieved 1 February 2022. Tyaransen, Olaf (25 March 2009). "30 remarkable years: Why McGuinness has been good for U2". Hot Press. Vol.33, no.5 . Retrieved 22 April 2011. David Browne of Entertainment Weekly gave Zooropa an "A", calling it "harried, spontaneous-sounding, and ultimately exhilarating album". Browne judged it to sound "messy" and "disconnected", but clarified "that sense of incoherence is the point" in the context of the record's technology themes. He concluded, "For an album that wasn't meant to be an album, it's quite an album." [31] Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times gave the record a maximum score of four stars. In two separate articles, he said that it "captured the anxious, even paranoid tone of the Zoo TV Tour" so much so that "it stands as the first tour album that doesn't include any of the songs from the tour" and yet sounds like a "souvenir" of Zoo TV. [26] [40] In a positive review, Jim Sullivan of The Boston Globe called the album a "creative stretch", noting that the band experimented more yet retained their recognizable sound. He commented that the group's "yearning anthemic reach" and "obvious, slinky pop charm" were replaced with "darker corners, more disruptive interjections, more moodiness". [63] Paul Du Noyer of Q gave Zooropa a score of four-out-of-five stars, finding a "freewheeling feel of going with the flow" throughout the album and calling it "rootless and loose, restless and unsettled". For Du Noyer, U2 sounded "monstrously tight as a performing unit and fluidly inventive as composers, so the results transcend the merely experimental". [81]The cover could also be seen as a recreation of “Babyface,” a song inspired by the growing ease of feeling close to strangers through TV (“Watching your bright blue eyes/In the freeze frame/I’ve seen them so many times/I feel like I must be your best friend”). “It’s a song about watching and not being in the picture,” said Bono. “About how people play with images, believing you know somebody through an image.” Lane, Lexi (5 July 2023). "U2 Will Honor The 30th Anniversary Of 'Zooropa' With A Limited-Edition Vinyl And A Global Livestream Event". Uproxx . Retrieved 8 July 2023. The myth of Achtung Baby was that U2 finally embraced alternative and electronic music after driving the American roots act straight into the ground on Rattle & Hum, an impressive reinvention propelled by radio-friendly hits like “One” and “Mysterious Ways.” U2 began writing and recording Zooropa in Dublin in February of that year, during a six-month break between legs of the ZOO TV Tour and was initially intended as just an EP, de la Parra, Pimm Jal (2003). U2 Live: A Concert Documentary. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-9198-7.

Zooropa (30th Anniversary) | Black Circle Records U2 - Zooropa (30th Anniversary) | Black Circle Records

U2 seems content to regress these days. Its last two albums have been characterized by a thematic return to the youth of the band’s members, and especially its lead singer. They haven’t totally lost sight of this period, though, even if Zooropa isn’t making it onto their set lists. U2’s latest tour marked the return of one of Bono’s most outrageous stage characters, a glam impersonation of the devil who first appeared on the early 1990s tour that birthed Zooropa. a b c d "U2×5 Hidden Things". Amp Visual. 3 December 2012. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014 . Retrieved 17 September 2014. Japanese album certifications – U2 – Zooropa" (in Japanese). Recording Industry Association of Japan . Retrieved 11 June 2019. Select 1993年8月 on the drop-down menu LOS 50 TÍTULOS CON MAYORES VENTAS EN LAS LISTAS DE VENTAS DE AFYVE EN 1993" (PDF) (in Spanish). Anuarios SGAE. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 August 2012 . Retrieved 21 May 2022.

Salaverrie, Fernando (September 2005). Sólo éxitos: año a año, 1959–2002 (PDF) (in Spanish) (1sted.). Madrid: Fundación Autor/SGAE. p.935. ISBN 84-8048-639-2 . Retrieved 7 February 2019. I wouldn’t rule out more physical boxes next year, with bigger vinyl sets and a CD box. If they can make an 11LP box out of All That You Can’t Leave Behind then the appetite will be there for Achtung Baby. Lapatine, Scott (4 August 2011). "Deluxe Achtung Baby Details". Stereogum . Retrieved 1 August 2018. First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead. Produced by Flood, Brian Eno and The Edge, the album went to Number 1 in the UK, USA, Ireland, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Sweden, Austria, France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland and featured the singles ‘Numb’, ‘Lemon’ and ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!)’.

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Production Manager [2018 Album Remaster - Project Production Manager On Behalf Of Island Records/UMC] – Lisa Power a b Tyaransen, Olaf (4 December 2002). "Closer to the Edge". Hot Press. Vol.26, no.23 . Retrieved 26 April 2011.Christgau, Robert. "The 1993 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". robertchristgau.com . Retrieved 11 March 2011. Management [Principle Management Dublin] – Aislinn Meehan, Anne O'Leary, Barbara Galavan, Brigid Mooney, Candida Bottaci, Cecilia Coffey, Cillian Guidera, David Herbert (2), Eileen Long, Gerry Watters, Liz Devlin, Sandra Long To celebrate Zooropa‘s 25th anniversary, here are 10 things you might not know about this underrated gem. U2 has never been more U2 than they are now, but, for a flitting moment, on Zooropa, they broke free from all the constraints that come with being themselves. This is a beautiful and discordant, sweet and angry piece of music, out of body and out of time. Spin magazine wrote that the album “freed U2 from itself.” But they didn’t know what to do with that freedom. They didn’t know where to go. Harvilla, Rob (6 July 2013). "U2's 'Zooropa' Almost Killed Their Career". Spin . Retrieved 20 August 2023.