Only Adam Clayton seems to own Zooropa as one of his consistent favorites. regularly implies that the more loop-fueled experiments the band indulged in during the mid-’90s were not his most beloved outings. (More on this in a bit, but this fixation on hit singles is crucial in understanding the U2 of Zooropa in relation to the U2 of the ’00s.) The Edge writes it off as an interlude Larry Mullen, Jr. With none of its three singles (“Numb,” “Lemon,” “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”) becoming the sort of hits the band had become accustomed to with “With Or Without You” or “Mysterious Ways,” Bono lamented in hindsight that the band had lost touch with its pop sensibilities. Circumstantially and thematically, Zooropa is an album somewhat out of joint - so much so, in fact, that different members of U2 have tried to write it off over the years. In the end, the paradox of its release sort of makes sense. Zooropa is the one about diving deep, totally disappearing into something, in a manner that doesn’t work in the light of day. Because Zooropa has always felt like U2’s night album. The idea that this came out 20 years ago, and that someone would have had to walk into a record store in broad daylight on a hot summer day to purchase it, does not translate for me. I never did get around to that drive this time, but instead listened to it during the day, a circumstance in which Zooropa makes no sense. That was how I first discovered the album, on late night drives home from my high school girlfriend’s house, the blue and red glow of my dashboard and the gentler strobe of the tall highway lights passing through my window the closest approximation I could muster in small-town Pennsylvania for whatever bizarre European discotheque I thought U2 was trying to conjure. For about a week before I wrote this piece, I was looking for an excuse to go for a long drive at night and listen to Zooropa.
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