The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
U2 · produced by Flood, Brian Eno and The Edge · Island · ten tracks, about 50 minutes
Mode
Rock album turned toward ambient sound, programmed dance rhythm and sampling; irony and longing held in one frame
Mythos
An inverted prodigal and the Preacher of Ecclesiastes built; a watching angel and a new Babylon of slogans evoked
Phase
Ten tracks; a tuning in through slogans, long slow-building pieces in the first half, a loose middle, a small hymn and an old voice walking out
Presentation
Album; ten tracks, about fifty minutes, made in a break in the Zoo TV tour; one song written for a film, two led by voices other than the singer’s
Register
Falsetto, a guitarist’s deadpan monotone and an aged country voice beside the singer’s own; loops, samples and programmed drums beside a playing band
Scale
One self in a continent of channels after 1989: screens, offers, fathers, an addict, a city and the waste beyond it
Governing Proposition
A band at the commercial summit of rock, in a break in its stadium tour, makes a record that turns like a dial through advertising, crooning, dance music and hymn, and finds in the Europe after 1989 a self stimulated to the point of anaesthesia, choosing among offers and unable to believe. The record opens between stations and ends with an old man walking out of the broadcast into ruins.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins between stations. Before any band is heard there is a drift of voices, the slogans of advertising heard as if through a dial turning, set over an ambient wash with no pulse beneath it. For two minutes nothing settles. Then the band enters, the song lifts, and a band known for anthems sings, through its singer, of a continent made of offers, with nothing to steer by but “a guiding light” made of uncertainty. The opening states the record’s subject in sound before it states it in words: a self tuned to every channel at once and believing none of them.
Zooropa was made in Dublin in 1993, in a break in the Zoo TV tour, and finished while the tour resumed. Flood, Brian Eno and The Edge produced it, and Island issued it on 5 July 1993 in Britain and a day later in America: ten tracks, about fifty minutes. It followed Achtung Baby (1991), the record on which the band had taken its sound apart, and it goes further down the road that record opened, and faster: ambient openings, programmed drums and samples, a falsetto lead, a guitarist speaking a deadpan list, and a country singer past sixty closing the record over a synthesizer.
The turn had a stake. A band at the commercial summit of rock issued, in the middle of a stadium tour, a record with no obvious radio single, and risked the audience its previous record had kept. The form follows the opening. After the slogans the record moves from track to track like a hand on a dial, each song in a different idiom: lounge croon, techno, falsetto disco, ballad, industrial clatter, funk, hymn, guitar rock, country gospel. The long, slow-building pieces sit in the first half. A record about a self flooded with offers is built as a flood of offers, and its unevenness is part of what it knows.
Movement II
Numb is the record’s argument in four minutes. The Edge, the band’s guitarist, speaks a flat list of prohibitions in a monotone over stacked loops, and above him Bono sings a falsetto line that floats free of the list and never touches it. The voice of instruction and the voice of longing are recorded together and do not meet. The song does not describe numbness; it builds it, out of a command that has stopped meaning anything and a desire with nowhere to land, and the collision between them is audible in every bar.
What the record discloses can be put in a sentence. In the Europe that followed 1989, the opening of borders arrived as an opening of markets and channels, and the self it produced is stimulated to the point of anaesthesia: choosing among offers, unable to believe. The title track says this from outside, in slogans; Numb says it from inside, in form. The condition has aged toward the record’s listeners. An album made in the years of satellite television is now heard as a forecast of the networked self, and that is part of why its standing has risen.
Elsewhere the condition is more often surveyed than articulated. Babyface is a crooned address to a face on a screen, the record’s one study of desire for an image, and it is slight. Daddy’s Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car names the addict and the indulgent father under an industrial clatter, a symptom more than a diagnosis. Much of what the record knows is carried by its mood of drift, which is real and well rendered but remains a mood. Where it states, in the title track and in Numb, it states a meaning that holds; where it does not, it names what it sees and moves on to the next channel.
Movement III
The record rises often, though not constantly. The band’s arrival in the title track is the first height. Lemon is the second: a long, cool, dancing groove with Bono’s falsetto riding it from first bar to last, a song about watching an image made of projected light. The falsetto is recorded and treated as an instrument, and the groove is exact, though it holds past what the song needs. Then Stay, the warmest height on the record: a melody that keeps opening as it climbs, carried by a guitar figure that rings rather than drives.
Stay was written for Wim Wenders’s film Faraway, So Close!, and it borrows the film’s angel, an onlooker who watches and cannot intervene. The figure stays in the air of the song more than it bears its weight, but it gives the record its tenderest vantage: a presence in the media city that sees and cares and can do nothing. The arrangement is the best band playing on the record, guitar, bass and drums each with a distinct part and the melody given room, and it is the plainest sound on an album where much else is programmed, looped or treated.
The making is strongest where the record’s idea and its sound are one. Numb’s loops and voices are placed so that their collision is heard; the title track’s passage from wash to band is judged to the bar; the setting of The Wanderer, a pulse and a synthesizer under an old voice, is spare and right. The faults are those of haste, of a record finished on the road. Some Days Are Better Than Others has a generic arrangement. Daddy’s Gonna Pay is more effect than construction. Dirty Day climbs late and only partway, its long build muddier than it needs to be, and in places the mix buries what the song needs heard.
Movement IV
The First Time is a small hymn placed eighth, and it carries more weight than its size. It tells a parable and turns it. A son is given the keys to his father’s house, and he “threw away the key”, leaving by the back door. In the old story the prodigal comes home; here grace is offered and declined, and the song rises by withholding, its quiet elevation the elevation of what it turns away from. The pattern is not an allusion laid over the song. It is the song’s structure, and the inversion is its meaning.
Elsewhere myth is evoked more than built. The title track’s continent of slogans is a new Babylon, a city of the future made of offers, and the record holds it as atmosphere. Stay’s angel watches it from outside. Across the sequence a pattern can be read, a descent through the city to a pilgrim walking in the waste, but it is a frame laid by the order of the songs more than a myth the record builds whole. Fathers run through the record: the indulgent father who will pay for the crashed car, the father whose house is given and left.
Before the close the record loosens. Tracks six to nine follow one another by contrast more than by necessity, and their order could be shuffled with little change in what the record knows. Some Days Are Better Than Others is a funk shuffle with a list for a chorus, its idea spent in its first minute; it obeys no law but the genre it borrows, and the record could lose it with little loss. Daddy’s Gonna Pay belongs to the frame by its surface more than by its argument. Dirty Day climbs and stops. A tenth to a seventh of the record is permitted rather than compelled: the mark of an album made quickly, between the legs of a tour.
Movement V
The Wanderer comes last, and it has to. After nine channels the signal goes, and a man is left walking. Johnny Cash, past sixty, sings in a flat, aged voice over a bare pulse and a synthesizer, the only voice on the record that is old. The song builds the Preacher of Ecclesiastes as a walker through a ruined city, searching for a good man and finding religion sold as a trade. “I went out walking”: the record that opened by tuning in ends with a voice that has walked out of the broadcast, and the dread of the close is the dread of what lies outside it.
The close answers the opening, and the answer is the record’s law: every voice on it is a voice in the media city, and the last is the one outside, so the slogans of the first track and the hymn of the last stand to each other as inside and outside. The law holds over a wide range, lounge croon and techno, falsetto disco and gospel, in one frame of irony and longing. It is not held tight. The Wanderer is so different in texture and authority that some of its force comes from breaking the frame rather than fulfilling it, and the middle of the record obeys the frame loosely.
The record’s later life has been steady. It is in print and streamed, Stay and Numb remain known songs, and it is now commonly heard as the band’s most adventurous album. But it has lived in the shadow of Achtung Baby, as a respected side-turn more than a record played whole, and its programmed drums and satellite Europe date it even as its subject comes nearer. Its turn was taken on a path the band had just opened, with means from Eno, Kraftwerk and the dance-rock crossover, and its clearest descendant is the band’s own next album. It is a serious and lasting record that does not remake its tradition, and it ends, as it meant to, outside the city it built.
Act III · The Twelve
Ten tracks, and the frame is compelled. The title track’s drift of broadcast slogans has to come first, and The Wanderer has to come last, the one old voice on the record. Numb, Stay, The First Time and Dirty Day each say something the others do not. The test bites elsewhere. Some Days Are Better Than Others could go with little loss, its idea spent in its first minute. Babyface is slight, though it carries the record’s one study of desire for an image. Lemon holds its groove past what the song needs. A tenth to a seventh of the record is permitted rather than compelled, and it bears the marks of haste.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: in the Europe that followed 1989, the opening of borders arrived as an opening of markets and channels, and the self it produced is stimulated to the point of anaesthesia, choosing among offers and unable to believe. The title track builds this from advertising slogans over an ambient wash, offering only “a guiding light” made of uncertainty. Numb discloses it through form, a voice of instruction and a voice of longing that never meet. Held back because the condition is more often surveyed than articulated: Babyface and Daddy’s Gonna Pay name symptoms without deepening the diagnosis, and mood does much of the work.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The record rises on five or six of ten tracks. The title track’s first two minutes, slogans dissolving into a wash before the band enters and the song lifts, are a real arrival. Lemon reaches a cool, dancing transport. Stay is the warmest height, a melody that keeps opening as it climbs over a guitar figure that rings rather than drives. The First Time rises quietly, by withholding. The Wanderer reaches the dreadful kind: an aged voice over a pulsing synthesizer, a pilgrim among ruins. Numb accumulates rather than rises; Babyface, Some Days Are Better Than Others and most of Daddy’s Gonna Pay stay level, and Dirty Day climbs only partway.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Myth is built in two songs and evoked across the rest. The First Time builds an inverted prodigal: the son is given the keys to the father’s house and “threw away the key”, leaving by the back door. The archetype bears load; the song is the parable turned. The Wanderer builds the Preacher of Ecclesiastes as a walker through a ruined city, and Johnny Cash’s voice makes him a real old man, not a type. Stay borrows the watching angel of its film, and the title track’s city of slogans is a new Babylon: both evoked more than built. The descent from city to waste is laid by the sequence, not built whole.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The inheritance is twofold: the tradition of rock, and the band’s own former manner, which Achtung Baby (1991) had already turned from. This record turns further down that road and at speed: ambient openings, drum programming and sampling, a falsetto lead, a guitarist speaking a deadpan list, a country patriarch closing over a synthesizer. The stake was real: an experimental record issued mid-tour by a band at the commercial summit, with no obvious radio single. What holds the figure is inheritance: Eno’s ambient method, Kraftwerk’s Europe, Bowie’s Berlin records and the dance-rock crossover had cleared the ground, and the departures are more from the band’s past than from the tradition.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The sequence is a broadcast. The record opens by tuning in, slogans heard as if between stations, and moves from track to track as a set of channels in different idioms, from lounge and techno to hymn and country gospel. That heterogeneity is the instrument of the knowledge: a record about a self flooded with offers is built as a flood of offers, and a smoother form would know less. Numb is the strongest local case, its loops and unmeeting voices being its argument, and the close is placed with intent. What holds the figure is the middle: tracks six to nine follow one another by contrast more than by necessity.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Thirty-three years supply evidence, real but bounded. The record’s standing has risen since 1993: it is now commonly heard as the band’s most adventurous album and as a forecast of the networked self. Return repays in the production: Numb’s layers, the treated voice of Lemon and the textures under the opening keep yielding detail. Semantically the yield is narrower. The First Time and The Wanderer repay years of listening, and Stay deepens with its film; Babyface, Some Days Are Better Than Others and Daddy’s Gonna Pay are exhausted early, and the ironies, once read, do not reorganise on return. The attention has been steady more than intense.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The field is the rock album of the 1990s, and the contest is with rock’s sincerity and the band’s own former earnestness: anthem answered with irony, the stadium with the studio. The force is real and bounded. The record showed that a band at the commercial summit could carry ambient, dance and sampled texture into the mainstream album and keep its audience, but Achtung Baby had largely made that reorganisation, and the means came from Eno, Kraftwerk and the dance-rock crossover. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: rock’s electronic turn later in the decade moved in its direction, but no practice can be shown to have turned on it, and that holds the figure low.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Survival is weighed over thirty-three years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives intact and is heard as an album. Presence is real but narrower and more interrupted than that of the band’s central records: in print and streamed, with Stay and Numb still known and its critical standing risen, it has lived in the shadow of Achtung Baby, at 8.6 here, as a respected side-turn more than a record played whole. The surface is fixed to 1993 in its programmed drums and samplers, its satellite-television Europe and the advertising of the opening slogans, though the subject they serve has aged toward us. Those two charges set it level with Siamese Dream, of the same year, which carries the same two, and two tenths below Achtung Baby.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, is strong and in places load-bearing, not throughout. Numb is the best-made track: a stack of loops, a dry spoken lead and a falsetto counter-line, each placed so the collision is audible. Lemon’s groove is exact, its falsetto treated as an instrument. Stay is a fine band arrangement, each part distinct and the melody given room, and The Wanderer’s pulse and synthesizer under Cash are spare and right. The faults are those of haste: Some Days Are Better Than Others is generically arranged, Daddy’s Gonna Pay is more effect than construction, and Dirty Day’s long build is muddy.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the opening’s broadcast slogans and the closing country hymn sung by a man past sixty. They obey one law in part: every voice on the record is a voice in the media city, and the last is the one that has walked out of it, so the extremes stand as inside and outside. The range is wide, croon, techno, falsetto disco and gospel in one frame of irony and longing. But the law loosens in the middle, where Some Days Are Better Than Others obeys only the genre it borrows, and The Wanderer draws some of its force from breaking the law rather than fulfilling it.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Judged on what the record holds. Consciousness, the self under stimulation, is held in Numb; the market and the medium in the title track and Babyface; Europe after 1989 in the opening’s continent of slogans. The family enters as the indulgent father of Daddy’s Gonna Pay and the father’s house of The First Time; addiction in Daddy’s Gonna Pay; the sacred in The First Time and The Wanderer. That is a wider span than most albums attempt, and the frame of the media city joins several orders. What holds the figure is integration: the orders arrive track by track, history and the state are evoked through slogans, and labour and nature are absent.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.4, then The Made at 8.2 and The Sublime at 8.0. A recording whole after thirty-three years, its standing risen and its subject aged toward its listeners; a making that is load-bearing where idea and sound are one, in Numb’s colliding voices, Lemon’s treated falsetto and Stay’s band arrangement; and height on five or six of ten tracks, from the band’s arrival in the title track to Stay and The Wanderer.
Limiting Dimension
Pressure on Tradition and The Encompassed at 7.4: a reorganisation largely made by Achtung Baby, with means from Eno, Kraftwerk and the dance-rock crossover and no later practice shown to turn on this record; and many orders present, arriving song by song, with history and the state evoked through slogans and labour and the natural order absent. Then The Inevitable at 7.5, where a tenth to a seventh of the record is permitted rather than compelled.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.5 against a threshold of 7.5, on the line and with no room. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.8, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 7.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 8.4, The Unconcealment at 7.8, The Swerve at 7.8, The Archetypal Deep at 7.7 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.4 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at Pressure on Tradition, 7.4, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.4. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.8, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as released by Island on 5 July 1993 in Britain and a day later in America, ten tracks in their original order, about fifty minutes, produced by Flood, Brian Eno and The Edge; judged from knowledge of the recording, its lyrics and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. The Edge sings lead on Numb and Johnny Cash on The Wanderer; Stay (Faraway, So Close!) was written for the Wim Wenders film of that name. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them accounts of how the record grew in the making, the studios and recording dates, the share of each producer’s hand, the sources of particular songs, the chart positions and awards and the album’s later live history, are not given.