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ZOOROPA won the 1994 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.
The bright, digital-looking album artwork alone hints at U2's intentions on ZOOROPA--to take the group's electronica-laced approach on ACHTUNG BABY to the next level. While ambient-music pioneer Brian Eno had a strong presence on the former album, here he's practically a fifth member, contributing synthesizers and keyboards to most of the disc's 10 tracks.
Fans looking for vestiges of the old, JOSHUA TREE-era U2 are essentially left empty-handed, though the gorgeously spare and melancholy "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" does touch on their earnest earlier sound. ZOOROPA truly gets going with the fascinatingly droning "Numb," which features the Edge on lead vocals and stands as the most adventurous single that the Irish quartet has ever released. From here the album hits a stride, careening through the giddy Euro-disco of "Lemon," the aforementioned "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)," the heavily percussive "Daddy's Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car," and the funky, chiming "Some Days Are Better Than Others." Wrapping up the quirkiest outing in U2's discography is an appropriately strange, yet inspired song--"The Wanderer," where Kraftwerk-like synths and dreamy backing vocals support the unmistakable voice of the legendary Johnny Cash. Although, ZOOROPA is often overlooked, it's an ambitious record that marks a crucial point in U2's evolution.
Recorded at The Factory, Windmill Lane Studios and Westland Studios, Dublin, Ireland in spring 1993.
Engineers include: Robbie Adams, Daniel Lanois, Flood.
U2: Bono (vocals, guitar); The Edge (guitar, piano, synthesizer, background vocals); Adam Clayton (bass); Larry Mullen, Jr. (drums, percussion, background vocals).
Additional personnel: Johnny Cash (vocals); Brian Eno (keyboards, synthesizer); Des Broadbery, Flood (programming).
Rolling Stone (8/5/93, p.63) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...startling....a daring, imaginative coda to ACHTUNG BABY....it works brilliantly..."
Spin (9/93, p.116) - Highly Recommended - "...U2 is bidding to up the ante on its new freedom....ZOOROPA indicates U2 might be worthy of whatever absurd mutations the '90s throw our way..."
Entertainment Weekly (12/31/93, p.115) - Ranked #1 in Entertainment Weekly's list of 'The Best & Worst Records Of 1993' - "...[U2's] attempt to make sense of their place in pop and the world at large is downright heroic...."
Entertainment Weekly (7/9/93, p.46) - "...a harried, spontaneous-sounding, and ultimately exhilarating album on which the world's greatest arena guitar band rarely sounds like itself...For an album that wasn't meant to be an album, it's quite an album..." - Rating: A
Q (1/94, p.86) - Included in Q's list of 'The 50 Best Albums Of 1993' - "...U2's most adventurous outing yet...."
Q (8/93, p.99) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...here is U2, the foremost rock 'n' roll band on the planet, seeing if rock can be fashioned from sonic technology....ZOOROPA refines the first steps in this attempt that ACHTUNG BABY took....the results transcend the merely experimental..."
Q (8/94, p.115) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...It's stronger than its parent ACHTUNG BABY..."
Melody Maker (7/3/93, p.28) - "...after a decade of intermittently looking and sounding crap they've got both the image and the music right...."
Musician (9/93, p.76) - "...by no means a stopgap project, ZOOROPA ranks among the band's best work to date..."
Village Voice (3/1/94, p.5) - Ranked #9 in the Village Voice's 1993 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
NME (Magazine) (7/3/93, p.32) - 6 - Good. Zooropa Music | List Price | $13.95 (You save $3.16) | | Category | Rock Albums, Rock/Pop CDs, Alternative | | Label | Island | | Orig Year | 1993 | | All Time Sales Rank |  3208  | | CD Universe Part number | 1231522 | | Catalog number | 518047 | | Discs | 1 | | Release Date | Jul 06, 1993 | | Studio/Live | Studio | | Mono/Stereo | Stereo | | Producer | Flood; Brian Eno; The Edge | | Recording Time | 51 minutes | | Personnel | Bono - vocals, guitar
Edge - guitar, piano, synthesizer, background vocals
Adam Clayton - bass
Larry Mullen Jr. - drums, percussion, background vocals
Also: Johnny Cash, Brian Eno, Johnny Cash, Flood, Des Broadbery |
Zooropa Music Review Average Rating: (4.1 out of 5 stars)   List All Reviews Not their best but good enough
Can't top listening to it it's kinda relaxing and has Mr. Johnny Cash in it! So good job!
Submitted by srrauldcmarvel (Mexico City, Mexico)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No Unique, and not merely a continuation of their sound
Zooropa is one of those albums that defies many attempts at explanation. On one hand, the critics say that this is merely the continuation of their "Achtung Baby" album, while fans assert that this is one of their best albums period. I tend to fall somewhere in between the two ideas. It is true that several of these songs mimic the dark atmospherics of "Achtung Baby" (Numb, Stay (Faraway, So Close), Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, Dirty Day), several of these songs also indicate new directions to their music. "Lemon" is particularly interesting, as well as "The Wanderer." "The First Time" is by far their first piano-based ballad that melds perfectly with Bono's voice, creating a very radio-friendly hit that at the same time is far more effective at expressing the song's meaning than anything they had ever done before. "The First Time" was the genesis of songs like "One Step Closer" off of the "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" album, and "Grace" off of "All That You Can't Leave Behind". "Some Days Are Better Than Others" is a fun exploration into pop music for the group. One could peg this album as an album of a group in transition, but the reality is that this is as fully realized as any U2 album, past or present. If you are a fan, then you better have at least a few songs off of this album.
Submitted by Galen (Anchorage, AK, USA)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No zooed in
a wonderful all-encompassing rock record
Submitted by love rat (Encino, CA, USA)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No U2 does it again
U2 once again prove that they can shed their skin and still retain their audience. Zooropa is excellent because it is unique and exciting! For me the highlights are "Lemon" "Stay" and "The Wanderer". I have been a die hard U2 fan since I was 13 and they NEVER dissappoint!
Submitted by Jim (North Providence RI)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No  Melodic Greatness!!!
This is one of the guys best work to date. Great lyrics and great songwriting.
Submitted by jejr9 (Irvine)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No
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Purchase Zooropa CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | U2 Achtung Baby CD (1991)
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In 1991, U2 shocked the pop-music world with ACHTUNG BABY, a striking departure from the Irish band's beloved '80s arena-rock sound. Here the group careens into sonically adventurous territory, reveling in distorted guitars, drum loops, and layers of synthesizers.
The stunning opening track, "Zoo Station," kicks in with fierce, fuzzed-out guitar and a clanging industrial beat, Bono's distinctive voice the only tell-tale sign that this is indeed a U2 album. From here, ACHTUNG BABY deftly maneuvers between giddy electro-pop (the shimmering "Even Better Than the Real Thing," the funky "Mysterious Ways"), bold techno-tinged rock (the majestic punch of "Until ...
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Like much pop music in the mid-1990s, POP is cobbled together out of buzzy synthesizers and reverberant keyboards, techno drum loops and funky live drums, guitars distorted into clouds of metal, vocals you sometimes have to work to hear, and songs that seek God and sex and other important stuff in the world's trash heaps. And it's obsessed, more than anything else, with pop itself. At its most frisky, as on the dance-club single "Discotheque," POP sounds like Oasis backed by the Chemical Brothers (see that combo's recent single "Setting Sun" for comparison). Drop the club beat and add a bright acoustic guitar, as on "Staring At The Sun," and POP sounds like, well, Oasis.
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Few bands are as ready for superstardom as U2 circa 1986. After chart successes with WAR and THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE and a high profile appearance at Live Aid, the Irish quartet holed up at a Dublin studio with engineers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and crafted the definitive sound of late '80s mainstream rock. Deftly marrying WAR's edgy bombast, THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE's impressionism, Eno's ambient flourishes, and the band's newfound interest in American roots music, THE JOSHUA TREE is U2's crowning moment, a perfect nexus of the band's expansive muse and the popular zeitgeist. It consistently ranks in the higher reaches of critics' lists of the greatest albums of all time.
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