10 Terrible Albums By Legendary Music Bands

As the '90s started to come alive with the rise of grunge, it would make sense that a band like U2 could fade out of relevancy. Their entire appeal was about making music feel like the biggest thing in the world, and the era of bringing rootsiness back to the genre didn't really cater to their strengths. Achtung Baby definitely set them up for a second wind, but the experimentation on that one album can only take you so far.

While Zooropa was another way for them to take chances with more electronic leaning production, Pop is the moment where everything started to go wrong, with all of the soul being stripped out of the songs and Bono adopting a falsetto sound that feels almost artificial some of the time. Even when the Edge brings in some of his trademark guitar effects, you can tell that something's definitely off, with the effects from his guitar sounding interchangeable with some of the schlock that they're plugging into their MIDI synthesizers as they record this.

For all of the laughs that can be had from songs like Discotheque, this isn't the kind of ironic laughter that you get from a goofy track. The only reason why most of us are laughing is just to convince each other that Bono hadn't gone too far off the deep end this time. We're a long way from the iPhone disaster, but this entire record feels like an AI trying to make something close to what a U2 record should sound like.