224-813: Zooropa is the eighth studio album by Irish rock band U2 . Produced by Flood , Brian Eno , and the Edge , it was released on 5 July 1993 on Island Records . Inspired by the band's experiences on the Zoo TV Tour , Zooropa expanded on many of the tour's themes of technology and media oversaturation. The record was a continuation of the group's experimentation with alternative rock , electronic dance music , and electronic sound effects that began with their previous album, Achtung Baby , in 1991. U2 began writing and recording Zooropa in Dublin in February 1993, during
448-462: A celebration of a time when U2 was still musically daring; give 'Lemon' credit at least for successfully trolling you. It is the maddening, befuddling, discomfiting, somewhat ill-advised, occasionally inspired sound of very famous, very difficult men trying on some ill-fitting clothes." In 2011, Rolling Stone ranked the record at number 61 on its list of "100 Best Albums of the Nineties". All music
672-514: A certain degree doesn't care if it's popular. — Bill Wyman in Vulture (2016) The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was also greatly influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists. The sound of an electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered jazz music in
896-590: A chill through the industry that is still felt". In the Washington Post , Chris Richards wrote in 2018 that no case had exerted more influence on pop music, likening it to banning a musical instrument. Some have accused the law of restricting creativity, while others argue that it forces producers to innovate. Since the O'Sullivan lawsuit, samples on commercial recordings have typically been taken either from obscure recordings or cleared, an often expensive option only available to successful acts. According to
1120-549: A commodity, and yet sampling has never been more risky". Sampling can help popularize the sampled work. For example, the Desiigner track " Panda " (2015) reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 after Kanye West sampled it on " Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 2 " (2016). Some record labels and other music licensing companies have simplified their clearance processes by "pre-clearing" their records. For example,
1344-430: A drumbeat or complete melody), and may be layered, equalized , sped up or slowed down, repitched, looped , or otherwise manipulated. They are usually integrated using electronic music instruments ( samplers ) or software such as digital audio workstations . A process similar to sampling originated in the 1940s with musique concrète , experimental music created by splicing and looping tape . The mid-20th century saw
1568-496: A few seconds in length, but this increased with improved memory . In 1988, Akai released the first MPC sampler, which allowed users to assign samples to pads and trigger them independently, similarly to playing a keyboard or drum kit. It was followed by competing samplers from companies including Korg , Roland and Casio . Today, most samples are recorded and edited using digital audio workstations (DAWs) such as Pro Tools and Ableton Live . As technology has improved,
1792-519: A fondness for a good beat, a meaningful lyric with some wit, and the theme of youth, which holds an "eternal attraction" so objective "that all youth music partakes of sociology and the field report ." Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), he said this sensibility is evident in the music of folk singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked , rapper LL Cool J , and synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys —"all kids working out their identities"—as much as it
2016-481: A foundation of simple syncopated rhythms in a 4 meter , with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian , as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s, and particularly from
2240-628: A frequent addition to the established rock format of guitars, bass, and drums in subsequent progressive rock. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things ' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who 's Tommy (1969) introduced
2464-452: A further shift away from his trademark style, highlighted by a heavier reliance on guitar effects and the songs' reduced emphasis on his guitar parts. The danceable " Lemon ", called a "space-age German disco " by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, features a gated guitar part. The distorted "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" was described by Bono as "industrial blues". The instrumentation of the closing song, "The Wanderer", consists primarily of
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#17327870985312688-409: A greater extent on Zooropa . The record exhibits additional influences from alternative rock, electronic dance music, and industrial music—it is more synthesised than U2's past work, featuring various sound effects, audio loops, and use of synthesisers . In addition to the Edge playing synthesiser, Brian Eno received credit for the instrument on six tracks. The Edge's guitar playing on Zooropa marks
2912-515: A hectic year of touring, the two did not want to settle back into domestic life. Bono said, "We thought we could live a normal life and then go back on the road [in May 1993]. But it turns out that your whole way of thinking, your whole body has been geared toward the madness of Zoo TV... So we decided to put the madness on a record. Everybody's head was spinning, so we thought, why not keep that momentum going...?" The Edge also wished to distract himself from
3136-630: A key feature of psychedelia. Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of the decade. 1967 saw the Beatles release their definitive psychedelic statement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , including the controversial track " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ", the Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request , and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at
3360-573: A loud amplified sound, often centered on the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues , particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated . The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream , combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis. The other key focus for British blues
3584-496: A mainstream audience by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop , which used the techniques to produce soundtracks for shows including Doctor Who . In the 1960s, Jamaican dub reggae producers such as King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry began using recordings of reggae rhythms to produce riddim tracks, which were then deejayed over. Jamaican immigrants introduced the techniques to American hip hop music in
3808-587: A mainstream audience with hits including " Blowin' in the Wind " (1963) and " Masters of War " (1963), which brought " protest songs " to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences. Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' " House of the Rising Sun " (1964), which
4032-495: A major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia . By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple , and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre
4256-429: A major influence on subsequent electronic rock . With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and
4480-479: A minor work, and generally U2 don't do minor. But if you're not going to make the Big Statement, you're maybe going to come up with something that has the oxygen of pop music." In 1997, Ann Powers of Spin wrote, " Zooropa took U2 as far from the monastic mysticism of The Joshua Tree as they could go. It freed U2 from itself." In 2013, the magazine published an article by Rob Harvilla that called Zooropa
4704-410: A more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly blues, country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock. In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde . This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, such as Nashville Skyline , have been seen as creating the genre of country folk ,
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#17327870985314928-486: A multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige". "Maybe the Bee Gees became more popular than the Beatles, but they were never more popular than Jesus ", he said. "Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential – there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change
5152-589: A national phenomenon. It is often argued that the surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964, because most surf music hits were recorded and released between 1960 and 1965. By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles , Gerry & the Pacemakers and
5376-430: A new photo from 1993 on the inner gatefold . Zooropa received generally favourable reviews from critics. Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone wrote in his four-star review that the album was "a daring, imaginative coda to Achtung Baby " and that "it is varied and vigorously experimental, but its charged mood of giddy anarchy suffused with barely suppressed dread provides a compelling, unifying thread". Spin wrote
5600-494: A noisy collage of indecipherable human voices from radio signals—credited to the "advertising world"—played over sustained synthesiser chords . The industrial-influenced " Numb " features a noisy backdrop of sampled, rhythmic noises, including "arcade sounds", a Walkman rewinding, and a Hitler Youth boy banging a bass drum in the 1935 propaganda film Triumph of the Will . "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" begins with
5824-470: A piano by playing the recording back at different pitches. The result better resembled a real piano than sounds generated by synthesizers. Compared to later samplers, the Fairlight was limited; it allowed control over pitch and envelope , and could only record a few seconds of sound. However, the sampling function became its most popular feature. Though the concept of reusing recordings in other recordings
6048-430: A positive review, commenting that the record "sounds mostly like a band shedding its skin, trying on different selves for size". The review said the album "has the feel of real collectivity", praising the cohesiveness of the individual band members' playing. The review concluded by saying Zooropa "indicates U2 might be worthy of whatever absurd mutations the '90s throw our way". Jon Pareles of The New York Times praised
6272-459: A preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end. Rock quickly spread out from its origins in the US, associated with the rapid Americanization that
6496-444: A prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock , which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s. The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield 's Tubular Bells (1973),
6720-518: A relevant time. U2 toyed with the idea of releasing Zooropa as an interactive audio-video presentation in lieu of conventional physical formats, but the deadline imposed by the Zoo TV Tour prevented the band from realising this idea. U2's delivery of Zooropa in late May caught PolyGram somewhat off-guard, because they were not expecting a new album by the group for several years. With Achtung Baby , PolyGram had approximately six months to market
6944-446: A rigidly delineated musical definition." In the opinion of music journalist Robert Christgau , "the best rock jolts folk-art virtues—directness, utility, natural audience—into the present with shots of modern technology and modernist dissociation ". Rock and roll was conceived as an outlet for adolescent yearnings ... To make rock and roll is also an ideal way to explore intersections of sex, love, violence, and fun, to broadcast
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7168-721: A route pursued by a number of largely acoustic folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group the Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival , both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder , Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George , and influenced
7392-568: 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". A review from The New Zealand Herald was more critical, saying that the album started as an EP and "just got longer but not necessarily better". The publication called it "more perplexing than challenging" and commented that it "sounds like
7616-487: 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. 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
7840-481: A slogan one only began to hear in 1972 or so, mobilized all those eager to believe that idealism had become passe, and once they were mobilized, it had. In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock . Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into
8064-429: A snippet of fanfare from Lenin's Favourite Songs and samples MC 900 Ft. Jesus ' song "The City Sleeps". The vocals on Zooropa are a further departure from U2's previous style. As Jon Pareles described, Bono "underplays his lung power" throughout the record, in contrast to his impassioned, belting vocals from past work. Additionally, in songs such as "Lemon" and "Numb", Bono sings in an operatic falsetto he calls
8288-407: A style that drew directly from the genres of blues , rhythm and blues , and country music . Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk , and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock is centered on the electric guitar , usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar , drums , and one or more singers. Usually, rock
8512-419: A synthesised bassline and was described by the group as resembling the "ultimate Holiday Inn band from hell". The song was sequenced as the final track because U2 wanted to end the album on a "musical joke". Similar to how the Zoo TV Tour display screens sampled video footage from television programming, a number of songs from Zooropa sample audio. The introduction to the title track, " Zooropa ", contains
8736-464: A variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock . However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song, and concepts of "authenticity". Psychedelic music's LSD -inspired vibe began in
8960-529: A variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music , and rhythm and blues . Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise ." The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted, and rock has been seen as an appropriation of Black musical forms for
9184-413: A variety of sources. " Zooropa " was the result of combining two separate pieces of music together, one of which the band discovered while reviewing recordings of tour soundchecks. The verse melody to " Stay (Faraway, So Close!) " and an instrumental backing track that became " Numb " were originally from the Achtung Baby sessions. "Babyface", " Dirty Day ", " Lemon ", and "The Wanderer" were written during
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9408-623: A work, and gave the example of two artists both demanding more than 50%, a mathematical impossibility. He instead advocated for a process of clearing samples on a musicological basis, by identifying how much of the composition the sample comprises. According to Fact , early hip hop sampling was governed by "unspoken" rules forbidding the sampling of recent records, reissues, other hip hop records or non-vinyl sources, among other restrictions. These rules were relaxed as younger producers took over and sampling became ubiquitous. In 2017, DJ Shadow said that he felt that "music has never been worth less as
9632-501: A young, white and largely male audience. As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it
9856-464: Is "perhaps the greatest U2 song". After the release of Zooropa , David Bowie praised the band, writing, "[U2] might be all shamrocks and deutsche marks to some, but I feel that they are one of the few rock bands even attempting to hint at a world which will continue past the next great wall—the year 2000." In 2023, Steven Hyden of Uproxx echoed Bowie's sentiments in a 30th anniversary retrospective on Zooropa : "U2 dared to imagine something that in
10080-501: Is a creative act. In the 1940s, the French composer Pierre Schaeffer developed musique concrète , an experimental form of music created by recording sounds to tape , splicing them, and manipulating them to create sound collages . He used sounds from the human body, locomotives, and kitchen utensils. The method also involved tape loops , splicing lengths of tape end to end so a sound could be played indefinitely. Schaeffer developed
10304-507: Is a foundation of hip hop music , which emerged when producers in the 1980s began sampling funk and soul records, particularly drum breaks . It has influenced many other genres of music, particularly electronic music and pop . Samples such as the Amen break , the " Funky Drummer " drum break and the orchestra hit have been used in thousands of recordings, and James Brown , Loleatta Holloway , Fab Five Freddy and Led Zeppelin are among
10528-551: Is another important early work of sampling, incorporating samples of sources including Arabic singers , radio DJs and an exorcist . Musicians had used similar techniques before, but, according to the Guardian writer Dave Simpson, sampling had never before been used "to such cataclysmic effect". Eno felt the album's innovation was to make samples "the lead vocal". Big Audio Dynamite pioneered sampling in rock and pop with their 1985 album This Is Big Audio Dynamite . Sampling
10752-404: Is composed almost entirely of samples, most of which were cleared "easily and affordably"; the clearance process would be much more expensive today. The Washington Post described the modern use of well known samples, such as on records by Kanye West , as an act of conspicuous consumption similar to flaunting cars or jewelry. West has been sued several times over his use of samples. In 2000,
10976-535: Is composed by U2 Notes Adapted from the liner notes. U2 Additional musicians Rock music Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll " in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll,
11200-540: Is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Four years later, Bill Haley 's " Rock Around the Clock " (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry , Bo Diddley , Fats Domino , Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , and Gene Vincent . Soon rock and roll
11424-472: Is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft . New styles had evolved to replace garage rock. Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B based acts,
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#173278709853111648-555: Is in the music of Chuck Berry , the Ramones , and the Replacements . The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music , with country and western . Debate surrounds
11872-411: Is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith , rock was "something more than pop, something more than rock and roll" and "[r]ock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with
12096-632: Is one of the foundations of hip hop , which emerged in the 1980s. Hip hop sampling has been likened to the origins of blues and rock , which were created by repurposing existing music. The Guardian journalist David McNamee wrote that "two record decks and your dad's old funk collection was once the working-class black answer to punk ". Before the rise of sampling, DJs used turntables to loop breaks from records, which MCs would rap over. Compilation albums such as Ultimate Breaks and Beats compiled tracks with drum breaks and solos intended for sampling, aimed at DJs and hip hop producers . In 1986,
12320-702: Is permitted. In Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc (1991) and Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films (2005), American courts ruled that unlicensed sampling, however minimal, constitutes copyright infringement. However, VMG Salsoul v Ciccone (2016) found that unlicensed samples constituted de minimis copying, and did not infringe copyright. In 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that modified, unrecognizable samples could be used without authorization. Though some artists sampled by others have complained of plagiarism or lack of creativity, many commentators have argued that sampling
12544-466: Is protected under American fair use laws, which grant "limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holder". The American musician Richard Lewis Spencer , who owned the copyright for the widely sampled Amen break , never received royalties for its use as the statute of limitations for copyright infringement had passed by the time he learnt of the situation. The journalist Simon Reynolds likened it to "the man who goes to
12768-443: Is reflected in lines such as, "A man makes a picture / A moving picture / Through the light projected he can see himself up close". The lyrics to "Numb" are a series of "don't" commands, amidst a noisy backdrop of sounds. The Edge notes that the song was inspired by one of the themes of Zoo TV, "that sense that you were getting bombarded with so much that you actually were finding yourself shutting down and unable to respond because there
12992-458: Is song-based music with a 4 time signature using a verse–chorus form , but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music , lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s. Rock musicians in
13216-399: Is termed as a rock band or a rock group. Furthermore, it typically consists of between three (the power trio ) and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer, and often keyboard player or another instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on
13440-418: Is the Band." Sampling (music)#Loops In sound and music , sampling is the reuse of a portion (or sample ) of a sound recording in another recording. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, or sound effects. A sample can be brief and only incorporate a single musical note (as is the case with sample-based synthesis ), or it can consist of longer portions of music (such as
13664-402: Is the next U2 album or a bunch of rough sketches that in two years will turn into the demos for the next U2 album." The Edge was a proponent of making an EP of new material to promote the upcoming leg of the tour, describing his mentality as thus: "We've got a bit of time off. We've got some ideas hanging around from the last record, let's do an EP, maybe four new songs to spice the next phase of
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#173278709853113888-486: 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." 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
14112-466: The Batman Forever soundtrack in 1995, and the latter three were included on the band's following studio album, Pop , in 1997. With an even more "European" musical aesthetic than Achtung Baby , Zooropa is a further departure from the group's " rootsy " sound of the late 1980s. Much like how the group embraced technology for the Zoo TV Tour, they utilized technology as a musical resource to
14336-535: The Billboard Hot 100 . The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many more groups to form. Thousands of garage bands were extant in the United States and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It
14560-524: The American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, using traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics . In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach
14784-637: The Billboard 200, 61 fewer weeks than Achtung Baby . Zooropa spent 34 weeks on the UK Albums Chart , nine of which were in the top ten, but it charted in the UK for 59 fewer weeks than Achtung Baby . According to Nielsen Soundscan , Zooropa sold 1.8 million copies in the US in 1993, the 22nd-highest total in the country that year, and by February 1997 sales in the US had reached 2.1 million copies. The album has been certified 2× Platinum in
15008-501: The Guardian , "Sampling became risky business and a rich man's game, with record labels regularly checking if their musical property had been tea-leafed." For less successful artists, the legal implications of using samples pose obstacles; according to Fact , "For a bedroom producer, clearing a sample can be nearly impossible, both financially and in terms of administration." By comparison, the 1989 Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique
15232-457: The Phonogene , which played loops at 12 different pitches triggered by a keyboard. Composers including John Cage , Edgar Varèse , Karheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis experimented with musique concrète, and Bebe and Louis Barron used it to create the first totally electronic film soundtrack, for the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet . Musique concrète was brought to
15456-495: The Zooropa sessions. Country singer Johnny Cash recorded vocals for "The Wanderer" during a visit to Dublin, and although Bono recorded his own vocals for the song, he preferred Cash's version. The production crew and the band debated which version to include on the record. Throughout the sessions, U2 were undecided on a unifying musical style for the release, and as a result, they maintained three potential track listings—one for
15680-422: The garage rock / post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. Rock has also embodied and served as
15904-417: The protest song , rock music has been associated with political activism , as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity . At the same time, it has been commercially highly successful, leading to accusations of selling out . A good definition of rock, in fact, is that it's popular music that to
16128-463: The "Best Albums" list from The Village Voice ' s 1993 Pazz & Jop critics' poll. At the 36th Annual Grammy Awards , it won the award for Best Alternative Music Album . In his acceptance speech, Bono sarcastically mocked the "alternative" characterisation the album received and used a profanity on live television: "I think I'd like to give a message to the young people of America. And that is: We shall continue to abuse our position and fuck up
16352-456: The "Fat Lady" voice. Two tracks feature other people on lead vocals: for "Numb", the Edge provides lead vocals in the form of a droning, monotonous list of "don't" commands; for "The Wanderer", country musician Johnny Cash sings lead vocals, juxtaposing the electronic nature of the song with his haggard voice. 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
16576-452: The "disillusionment of the modern age". "Zooropa" is set amongst neon signs of a brightly lit futuristic city. In the song's introduction, background voices ask, "What do you want?" In response to the question, the lyrics in the first three verses consist of various advertising slogans , including, "Better by design", "Be all that you can be", and " Vorsprung durch technik ". Critic Parry Gettelman interpreted these lines as meaning to "signify
16800-454: The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray , and Scotty Moore . The use of distortion , pioneered by Western swing guitarists such as Junior Barnard and Eldon Shamblin was popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s. The use of power chords , pioneered by Francisco Tárrega and Heitor Villa-Lobos in
17024-411: The 1969 track "Amen, Brother", known as the Amen break , became popular with American hip hop producers and then British jungle producers in the early 1990s. It has been used in thousands of recordings, including songs by rock bands such as Oasis and theme tunes for television shows such as Futurama , and is among the most sampled tracks in music history. Other widely sampled drum breaks came from
17248-635: The 1970 James Brown song " Funky Drummer "; the Think break , sampled from the 1972 Lyn Collins song " Think (About It) ", written by Brown; and Led Zeppelin 's 1971 recording of " When the Levee Breaks ", played by John Bonham and sampled by artists including the Beastie Boys , Dr. Dre , Eminem and Massive Attack . In 2018, the Smithsonian cited the most sampled track as " Change
17472-515: The 1970s. Holger Czukay of the experimental German band Can spliced tape recordings into his music before the advent of digital sampling. The Guardian described the Chamberlin as the first sampler, developed by the English engineer Harry Chamberlin in the 1940s. The Chamberlin used a keyboard to trigger a series of tape decks, each containing eight seconds of sound. Similar technology
17696-549: The 1980s, samples were incorporated into synthesizers and music workstations , such as the bestselling Korg M1 , released in 1988. The Akai MPC , released in 1988, had a major influence on electronic and hip hop music, allowing artists to create elaborate tracks without other instruments, a studio or formal music knowledge. Its designer, Roger Linn , anticipated that users would sample short sounds, such as individual notes or drum hits, to use as building blocks for compositions; however, users sampled longer passages of music. In
17920-467: The 19th century and later on by Willie Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was popularized by Link Wray in the late 1950s. Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become
18144-823: The American producer Frank Dukes , has been used by artists including Drake , Kanye West , Kendrick Lamar , and J. Cole . In 2020, the US Library of Congress created an open-source web application that allows users to sample its copyright-free audio collection. Instead of sampling, artists may recreate a recording, a process known as interpolation. This requires only the musical content owner's permission, and creates more freedom to alter constituent components such as separate guitar and drum tracks. Sampling has influenced many genres of music, particularly pop, hip hop and electronic music. The Guardian journalist David McNamee likened its importance in these genres to
18368-477: The Banshees , Ultravox , and Simple Minds , showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences. In the late 1960s, jazz-rock emerged as a distinct subgenre out of the blues-rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. AllMusic states that the term jazz-rock "may refer to
18592-465: The Beat " by Fab Five Freddy , which appears in more than 1,150 tracks. According to WhoSampled , a user-edited website that catalogs samples, James Brown appears in more than 3000 tracks, more than any other artist. The Independent named Loleatta Holloway as the most sampled female singer in popular music. Her vocals were sampled in house and dance tracks such as " Ride on Time " by Black Box ,
18816-628: The Beatles, demonstrating "to the rock generation in general that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit singles", such as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including
19040-678: The Bridgeport judgement was decided in an American Federal court of appeal , lower courts ruling on similar issues are bound to abide by it. However, in the 2016 case VMG Salsoul v Ciccone , the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Madonna did not require a license for a short horn sample in her 1990 song " Vogue ". The judge Susan Graber wrote that she did not see why sampling law should be an exception to standard de minimis law. In 2019,
19264-617: The Byrds ' shift from folk to folk rock from 1965. The psychedelic lifestyle, which revolved around hallucinogenic drugs, had already developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent products of the scene were Big Brother and the Holding Company , the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane . The Jimi Hendrix Experience 's lead guitarist, Jimi Hendrix did extended distorted, feedback-filled jams which became
19488-431: The Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his " Like a Rolling Stone " becoming a US hit single. According to Ritchie Unterberger , Dylan (even before his adoption of electric instruments) influenced rock musicians like
19712-594: The Dominos , followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie , formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac , who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late 1960s Jeff Beck , also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band,
19936-458: 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)". Each copy includes a download card that can be used to redeem a digital copy of the album. To commemorate the album's 30th anniversary, in October 2023 the group released a limited-edition yellow vinyl pressing of the album containing
20160-650: The Factory that included a Soundcraft 6000 mixing console , an Otari MTR100 multi-track recorder , and four Neve console modules. The company also provided outboard gear such as a UREI 1176 Peak Limiter , a dbx 120X-DS subharmonic synthesizer , two Summit and two LA compressors , a Focusrite 115HD equaliser , a Yamaha SPX1000 multi-effects unit, Lexicon PCM-70 and AMS RMX-16 reverb units, and Yamaha NS-10 and EGV monitor speakers . The group employed Brian Eno and his assisting partner Mark "Flood" Ellis —both of whom worked on Achtung Baby —to produce
20384-507: The Gates of Dawn . Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Doors ' self-titled debut album . These trends peaked in the 1969 Woodstock festival , which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts. Sgt. Pepper was later regarded as the greatest album of all time and a starting point for the album era , during which rock music transitioned from
20608-471: The Jeff Beck Group . The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page , who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin . Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs. In America, blues rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack , but the genre began to take off in
20832-506: The Joint " (1949), also covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and " Rocket 88 " by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm ), recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed " race music ") for a multi-racial audience, and
21056-530: The Los Angeles record label Now-Again Records has cleared songs produced for West and Pusha T in a matter of hours. The owner of sampled material may not always be traceable, and such knowledge is commonly mislaid through corporate mergers, closures and buyouts. For example, Eddie Johns, the author of a song sampled in the 2000 Daft Punk track " One More Time ", has never been located. As of 2021, he
21280-503: The Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel , with the latter's acoustic " The Sounds of Silence " (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits. These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention . In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments. This British folk-rock
21504-791: The Modern Rock Tracks chart. The final commercial single was "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)", released worldwide on 22 November 1993. It was the album's most successful single, topping the Irish Singles Chart and peaking at number five in Australia, number six in New Zealand, number four in the UK, and number 61 in the US—making it the record's only single to chart on the UK Singles Chart and Hot 100 . "Zooropa"
21728-476: The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds , were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in
21952-588: The Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers , Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including 1950s rock and roll, soul, rhythm and blues, and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast , and particularly those from London like
22176-530: The Secret Life of Plants may have been the first album to make extensive use of samples. The Japanese electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra were pioneers in sampling, constructing music by cutting fragments of sounds and looping them. Their album Technodelic (1981) is an early example of an album consisting mostly of samples. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981) by David Byrne and Brian Eno
22400-672: The Seeds ) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers , the Remains , and the Fifth Estate ). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps the most defined regional sound. The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by
22624-794: The US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. However, it failed to chart on the singles charts in the UK or US. Zooropa was released on 5 July 1993, during the Zooropa leg of the Zoo TV Tour. An initial shipment of 1.6 million copies was made available in stores at the time of release. Two additional commercial singles were released from the album. "Lemon" received a limited commercial release in North America, Australia, and Japan in September 1993. The single peaked at number six in Australia and number three on
22848-502: The US by the Recording Industry Association of America , 3× Platinum in Australia, Platinum in the UK, and 4× Platinum in both New Zealand and Canada. To date, it has sold more than 7 million copies. 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
23072-676: The US was becoming dominated by lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances were developing a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers, and were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts; this influence would go on to shape the future of rock music through the British Invasion . The first four years of the 1960s has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll. More recently some authors have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible. While early rock and roll, particularly through
23296-619: The USSR and South Africa from 1955 to 1957, influencing the globalisation of rock. Johnny O'Keefe 's 1958 record " Wild One " was one of the earliest Australian rock and roll hits. By the late 1950s, as well as in the American-influenced Western world, rock was popular in communist states such as Yugoslavia, and the USSR, as well as in regions such as South America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American blues music and blues rock artists, who had been surpassed by
23520-751: The Wailers and " Louie Louie " by the Kingsmen (1963) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise), the Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana). Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached
23744-411: The Zooropa and Zoomerang legs. "The songs are not classics but they are more experimental and interesting than classic pop songs. This is something we don't necessarily care to do anymore. We don't go down the road with a piece of music just because it's unusual. That's not enough for us now. We want something that's potent and some of these songs are not particularly potent." — The Edge Although
23968-485: The Zooropa leg of the tour. Of the 157 shows the band played during the Zoo TV Tour, approximately 30 of them were after the release of Zooropa . Many of the album's songs found permanent places in the shows' set lists. "Lemon" and "Daddy's Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car" were performed with Bono in his MacPhisto persona, during encores of the Zoomerang Leg of the tour. "Dirty Day" was also played on this leg after
24192-401: The acoustic set. "Numb" was performed with the Edge playing guitar and on lead vocals, with Mullen performing backing vocals while drumming. "Zooropa" was played only three times and "Babyface" twice more at the same shows on the Zooropa leg, but they were cut out of the set list after the band were displeased with how they sounded live. "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" was performed acoustically for
24416-527: The advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era, the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared entirely from music at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the various dance crazes of the early 1960s, started by Chubby Checker 's record " The Twist " (1960). Some music historians have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including
24640-502: The album spent its first two weeks on the Billboard 200 at the top spot, staying in the top 10 for seven weeks. In its first week on sale, Zooropa sold 377,000 copies in the US, the group's best debut in the country to that point. The album reached the top 10 in 26 countries. Despite reaching impressive peak positions, Zooropa had a shorter stay on the music charts than Achtung Baby did. In total, Zooropa spent 40 weeks on
24864-415: The album that almost killed U2's career. Harvilla referred to the album as "a weird blip best understood as a portent of the burps that followed, a mega-band dipping a big toe into murky art-rock waters before belly-flopping completely with Pop and its subsequent crass, costly, cred-depleting tour misadventures." While lamenting the band's latter-career creative output, he added: "Mark this record, then, as
25088-416: The album until the song was removed. The journalist Dan Charnas criticized the ruling, saying it was difficult to apply conventional copyright laws to sampling and that the American legal system did not have "the cultural capacity to understand this culture and how kids relate to it". In 2005, the writer Nelson George described it as the "most damaging example of anti-hip hop vindictiveness", which "sent
25312-439: The album's track listing was eventually changed and the titles of several songs withheld from the album were accidentally left in the cover image; the songs include "Wake Up Dead Man", "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me", and "If You Wear That Velvet Dress". Author Višnja Cogan described this text as giving the impression of a "torn veil". Zooropa was named for the "Zooropa" leg of the Zoo TV Tour, which began in May 1993 while
25536-416: The arrangement of images on Achtung Baby ' s sleeve. The images include shots of a woman's face and mouth, as well as photographs of European leaders, including Vladimir Lenin , Benito Mussolini , and Nicolae Ceauşescu . These images are obscured by distorted purple text comprising the names of songs planned for the record that were provided to Works Associates during the sleeve design process. However,
25760-433: The band asked him to compile these recordings and create loops of interesting parts that they could play to in the studio. After Adams spent a few weeks assembling loops, the group entered The Factory in Dublin that February to begin composing rough demos . Bono and the Edge were most involved during this initial demoing process, which lasted six weeks. Audio services company Audio Engineering installed recording equipment at
25984-426: The band completed the record. The name is a portmanteau of "zoo" (from Zoo TV Tour and " Zoo Station ") and "Europa". During the album's production, one of the proposed titles was Squeaky . Zooropa completed U2's contractual obligation to Island Records , and to PolyGram , the multinational that purchased Island in 1989. Although the group were free to sign a new contract elsewhere, their strong relationship with
26208-414: The best songs, one for "vibes", and one for a soundtrack album. Bono suggested editing the best segments of songs together to create a montage . As May's "Zooropa" tour leg approached, U2 continued to record while simultaneously rehearsing for the tour. Their time limit prevented them from working on live arrangements for any of the new songs. Despite the sessions' rapid pace, the album was not completed by
26432-516: The bestselling single of 1989 in the UK. The orchestra hit originated as a sound on the Fairlight, sampled from Stravinsky's 1910 orchestral work Firebird Suite , and became a hip hop cliché. MusicRadar cited the Zero-G Datafiles sample libraries as a major influence on 90s dance music, becoming the "de facto source of breakbeats, bass and vocal samples". To legally use a sample, an artist must acquire legal permission from
26656-476: The biggest band in the world having one of the biggest, strangest mid-life crises ". Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun Times gave the record a three-and-a-half star review, calling it "inconsistent", but admitting "it's satisfying and surprising to hear a band of U2's status being so playful, experimental, and downright weird". Robert Christgau gave the album a B−, calling it "half an Eno album" in
26880-585: The biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands. During the next two years British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon , the Animals, Manfred Mann , Petula Clark , Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders , Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs , and Donovan all having one or more number one singles. Other major acts that were part of
27104-498: The center. The illustration, created by Shaughn McGrath, was an alteration of the " graffiti babyface" by Charlie Whisker that was originally on the face of the Achtung Baby compact disc/vinyl record. The cover's drawing was meant to represent an urban legend of a Soviet cosmonaut supposedly left floating in orbit for weeks after the collapse of the Soviet Union . In the background is a montage of blurred images, similar to
27328-405: The chart. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) is considered a milestone in American pop culture. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the entire top five. The Beatles went on to become
27552-448: The control room. At the end of a given week, Eno and Flood compared their notes and compiled the week's best jams onto a cassette for the band to listen to. The producers edited together their favourite sections of the jams and then discussed the arrangements with the group. U2 suggested alterations and added lyrics and melodies, before performing to the edited arrangements. To record all of the band's material and test different arrangements,
27776-401: The copyright holder, a potentially lengthy and complex process known as clearance. Sampling without permission can breach the copyright of the original sound recording, of the composition and lyrics, and of the performances, such as a rhythm or guitar riff. The moral rights of the original artist may also be breached if they are not credited or object to the sampling. In some cases, sampling
28000-424: The delights and limitations of the regional , and to deal with the depredations and benefits of mass culture itself. — Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide (1981) Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against " The Establishment ", social concerns, and life styles. These themes were inherited from
28224-443: The development of psychedelic rock , influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene . New genres that emerged included progressive rock , which extended artistic elements, heavy metal , which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, and glam rock , which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk
28448-455: The early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan , Hatfield and the North , Gong , and National Health . The French group Magma around drummer Christian Vander almost single-handedly created
28672-460: The early 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): The decade is, of course, an arbitrary schema itself—time doesn't just execute a neat turn toward the future every ten years. But like a lot of artificial concepts—money, say—the category does take on a reality of its own once people figure out how to put it to work. "The '60s are over,"
28896-462: The early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts. " I Want to Hold Your Hand " was the Beatles' first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 , spending seven weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on
29120-519: The electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek , and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector . The instrumental rock and roll of performers such as Duane Eddy , Link Wray and the Ventures was further developed by Dick Dale , who added distinctive "wet" reverb , rapid alternate picking, and Middle Eastern and Mexican influences. He produced
29344-442: The emotions he was feeling after separating from his wife during the Achtung Baby sessions in 1991. The other members, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. , ultimately agreed to join them for recording. After handling audio engineering for the recording of Achtung Baby , Robbie Adams was invited by U2 to manage sound mixing on the Zoo TV Tour. Adams also recorded the group's tour soundchecks . In January 1993,
29568-462: The emptiness of modern, godless life". In the song's second half, the theme of moral confusion and uncertainty is introduced, particularly in the lines "I have no compass / And I have no map". "Babyface" is about a man practicing his obsessive love for a celebrity by manipulating her image on a TV recording. "Lemon", inspired by an old video of Bono's late mother in a lemon-coloured dress, describes man's attempts to preserve time through technology. This
29792-431: The engineers utilised a technique they called "fatting", which allowed them to achieve more than 48 tracks of audio by using a 24-track analogue recording , a Fostex D20 timecode -capable DAT recorder, and an Adams Smith Zeta Three synchroniser; Adams went through 180 two-hour DAT tapes during the recording sessions. The production crew faced issues with audio spill at The Factory, as all group members recorded in
30016-518: The example set by the Beatles ' 1965 LP Rubber Soul in particular, other British rock acts released rock albums intended as artistic statements in 1966, including the Rolling Stones ' Aftermath , the Beatles' own Revolver , and the Who 's A Quick One , as well as American acts in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds ) and Bob Dylan ( Blonde on Blonde ). Garage rock was a raw form of rock music, particularly prevalent in North America in
30240-419: The final weeks, the band decided to exclude the traditional rock songs and guitar-driven tracks they had written in favour of an "album of disjointed, experimental pop". The Edge received a production credit—his first on a U2 record—for the extra level of responsibility he assumed for the album. Twenty songs were recorded during the sessions, but ultimately 10 were chosen for the final track listing. One piece that
30464-552: The first album created entirely from samples. The E-mu SP-1200 , released in 1987, had a ten-second sample length and a distinctive "gritty" sound, and was used extensively by East Coast producers during the golden age of hip hop of the late 1980s and early 90s. Commonly sampled elements include strings, basslines, drum loops, vocal hooks or entire bars of music, especially from soul records. Samples may be layered, equalized , sped up or slowed down, repitched, looped or otherwise manipulated. A seven-second drum break in
30688-498: The first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk , Tangerine Dream , Can , Focus (band) and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy " krautrock ", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music ), would be
30912-455: The folk scene. The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, such as guitar feedback , the Indian sitar and backmasking sound effects . Psychedelic rock particularly took off in California's emerging music scene as groups followed
31136-477: The following years. Author Bill Flanagan speculated, "Record stores could become obsolete as music is delivered over cable, telephone wires, or satellite transmissions directly into consumers' homes." With uncertainty over the future of these technologies and the implications of entertainment and telecommunications companies merging, the band negotiated with Island that the division of their earnings from future transmission systems would be flexible and decided upon at
31360-513: The format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums , often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson 's 1969 début album, In the Court of the Crimson King , which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron , with jazz and symphonic music , is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in
31584-404: The group for transforming themselves and becoming "raucous, playful and ready to kick its old habits". Pareles enjoyed the sonics and electronic effects that made the "sound of a straightforward four-man band ... hard to find", and he commented that "The new songs seem destined not for stadiums ... but for late-night radio shows and private listenings through earphones." The Orlando Sentinel gave
31808-464: The hip hop group N.W.A . were successfully sued for their use of a two-second sample of a Funkadelic song in the 1990 track " 100 Miles and Runnin' ". The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that all samples, no matter how short, required a license. A judge wrote: "Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way." As
32032-424: The imagery and the ideas that were in the airstream, gleaned from the world of advertising, CNN, MTV and so on. It struck a chord in us and the music that came out on Zooropa was very influenced by the tour. Normally it's the other way around; you put an album together and then you go off on the road and you're drawing from the album for your inspiration." — The Edge Songs originated from and were inspired by
32256-458: The impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues , including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds . British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly , who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson . Increasingly they adopted
32480-525: The importance of the guitar in rock. In August 2022, the Guardian noted that half of the singles in the UK Top 10 that week used samples. Sampling is a fundamental element of remix culture . Using the Fairlight, the "first truly world-changing sampler", the English producer Trevor Horn became the "key architect" in incorporating sampling into pop music in the 1980s. Other users of the Fairlight included Kate Bush , Peter Gabriel and Thomas Dolby . In
32704-589: The introduction of keyboard instruments that played sounds recorded on tape, such as the Mellotron . The term sampling was coined in the late 1970s by the creators of the Fairlight CMI , a synthesizer with the ability to record and playback short sounds. As technology improved, cheaper standalone samplers with more memory emerged, such as the E-mu Emulator , Akai S950 and Akai MPC . Sampling
32928-467: The invasion included the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five . The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols , that had dominated the American charts in
33152-509: The jazz flautist James Newton filed a claim against the Beastie Boys' 1992 single " Pass the Mic ", which samples his composition "Choir". The judge found that the sample, comprising six seconds and three notes, was de minimis (small enough to be trivial) and did not require clearance. Newton lost appeals in 2003 and 2004. In the 2005 case Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films ,
33376-486: The label and its founder Chris Blackwell prompted the band to remain with Island/Polygram by signing a long-term, six-album deal in June 1993. The Los Angeles Times estimated that the deal was worth US$ 60 million to U2, making them the highest-paid rock group ever. At the time, the group were cognizant of several emerging technologies that would potentially impact the delivery and transmission of music to consumers in
33600-517: The label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag , Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago , to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and the early 1970s. British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum . From
33824-446: The late 1950s and 1960s. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters. Following
34048-410: The loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation." Jazz-rock "...generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s", including the singer-songwriter movement. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into
34272-500: The lyrics as goes into a DJ's timecheck". Byrne remarked that the record resembles "a lot of mickey-taking over a variety of drum patterns". In a retrospective, four-star review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic stated that "most of the record is far more daring than its predecessor". For him, although there were moments that the album was "unfocused and meandering ... the best moments of Zooropa rank among U2's most inspired and rewarding music". Zooropa finished in 9th place on
34496-418: 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", while music journalist David Browne said the songs are concerned with "emotional fracturing in the techno-tronic age". Critic Robert Hilburn interpreted the album as U2 probing into what they saw as
34720-570: The mainstream." Zooropa was also nominated for Album of the Year at the 1993 GAFFA Awards in Denmark. The album performed well commercially, debuting at number one in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland. It also reached number one in the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, and Iceland. In the US,
34944-459: The majority of U2's album covers. Brian Williams was the graphic designer and created the digital images and layout. Inspired by the Zoo TV Tour's "highly charged electronic TV images in all of their saturated colours and fizz", Works Associates conceived a "kind of electronic flag" for Zooropa . The cover features a sketch of the circle of stars from the Flag of Europe with an "astrobaby" drawing in
35168-476: The many recordings which have been suggested as "the first rock and roll record ". Contenders include " Strange Things Happening Every Day " by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944); " That's All Right " by Arthur Crudup (1946), which was later covered by Elvis Presley in 1954; " The House of Blue Lights " by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack (1946); Wynonie Harris ' " Good Rocking Tonight " (1948); Goree Carter 's "Rock Awhile" (1949); Jimmy Preston 's " Rock
35392-438: The material six months later. The group's solution was to fly back and forth between Dublin and their concert destinations for about ten days to finish recording and mixing at night and during their off-days. Clayton called the process "about the craziest thing you could do to yourself", while Mullen said of it, "It was mad, but it was mad good, as opposed to mad bad." McGuinness later said the band had nearly wrecked themselves in
35616-674: The mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley . Hispanic and Latino American movements in rock and roll, which would eventually lead to the success of Latin rock and Chicano rock within the US, began to rise in the Southwest ; with rock and roll standard musician Ritchie Valens and even those within other heritage genres, such as Al Hurricane along with his brothers Tiny Morrie and Baby Gaby as they began combining rock and roll with country- western within traditional New Mexico music . In addition,
35840-609: The mid-1960s the Left Banke , the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords , wind , and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum 's " A Whiter Shade of Pale " (1967), with its Bach -inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesizers. Classical orchestration, keyboards, and synthesizers were
36064-479: The mid-1960s and so called because of the perception that it was rehearsed in the suburban family garage. Garage rock songs often revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" and unfair social circumstances being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery tended to be more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming. They ranged from crude one-chord music (like
36288-435: The mid-1960s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat , the early Jefferson Airplane , Janis Joplin , Johnny Winter , the J. Geils Band and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios , the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which included two British members, and
36512-580: The mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s " classic rock " period, a few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock , folk rock , country rock , Southern rock , raga rock , and jazz rock , which contributed to
36736-401: The mid-1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse–chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to
36960-406: The mixing and offered encouragement, creating, as Adams put it, "a kind of cheerleader thing. It all induces a nervous energy in you and creates a lot of pressure, and gives the whole thing a performance feel." Flood had to depart about a week prior to the completion of mixing due to prior obligations to produce Nine Inch Nails in Los Angeles. The recording of Zooropa concluded on 14 May 1993. In
37184-438: The most sampled artists. The first album created entirely from samples, Endtroducing by DJ Shadow , was released in 1996. Sampling without permission can infringe copyright or may be fair use . Clearance , the process of acquiring permission to use a sample, can be complex and costly; samples from well-known sources may be prohibitively expensive. Courts have taken different positions on whether sampling without permission
37408-448: The narrator wanders through a post-apocalyptic world "in search of experience", sampling all facets of human culture and hoping to find meaning in life. Bono described the song as an "antidote to the Zooropa manifesto of uncertainty", and he believes it presents a possible solution to the uncertainty expressed earlier on the album. The sleeve was designed by Works Associates of Dublin under the direction of Steve Averill , who had created
37632-465: The new music genre zeuhl with their first albums in the early 1970s. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing
37856-608: The new music. In Britain the subgenre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of the Eric Clapton -fronted band Cream , had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York–based the Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use
38080-482: The possibilities for manipulation have grown. Samples are distributed in sample libraries, also known as sample packs. In the 1990s, sample libraries from companies such as Zero-G and Spectrasonics had a major influence on contemporary music. In the 2000s, Apple introduced "Jam Packs" sample libraries for its DAW GarageBand . In the 2010s, producers began releasing sample packs on online platforms such as Splice . The Kingsway Music Library, created in 2015 by
38304-436: The possibility of releasing a "one-two punch" of records since the beginning of the Achtung Baby sessions. In early March, U2 reached a consensus to work towards a full-length album. Much like they had for the Achtung Baby sessions, the band split work between two studios at once; Adams operated a Soundtracs mixing console at The Factory, while Flood used an SSL console at the newly relocated Windmill Lane Studios . Due to
38528-553: The present moment seems to be of little common interest: the future... I mean the future as it stood in the '90s, when people looked beyond the 20th century and envisioned a radically different world emerging from a period of political and cultural uncertainty." Hyden felt that U2 had been guided by uncertainty for the record, calling it "artistically successful in that it set out to evoke an increasingly incoherent world by making anyone who heard it also feel incoherent". He believed that unlike other alternative rock albums from 1993, Zooropa
38752-438: The process. The group simultaneously used three separate rooms at Windmill Lane to mix, overdub , and edit . Adams said the hectic approach meant "there was never anybody sitting around waiting or doing nothing". Flood called the period one of "absolute lunacy". Eschewing console automation , the engineers adopted a "live performance" attitude to mixing, based on past experiences with Lanois. The band and production crew sat in on
38976-412: The psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis , particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It
39200-632: The record a rating of three-out-of-five stars, commenting, "Although U2 leans heavily on the electronic sound of contemporary dance music, the rhythm tracks on Zooropa are less than propulsive." The review said that Eno's production and the electronic flourishes made the album interesting, but that ultimately, "there's nothing especially hummable" and "the songs are not very memorable". 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
39424-423: The record and plan its release strategy, but the sudden completion of Zooropa necessitated a more hurried promotional plan. PolyGram president/CEO Rick Dobbis explained: "For the last one, we prepared for six months. It was like a marathon. But this is like a sprint, and that is the spirit it was made in. The band was so excited about it, they sprinted to complete the album before the ... tour. We want to bring it to
39648-465: The record was a success, in the years following its release, the group have regarded it with mixed feelings and rarely play its material in live performances. Bono said, "I thought of Zooropa at the time as a work of genius. I really thought our pop discipline was matching our experimentation and this was our Sgt. Pepper . I was a little wrong about that. The truth is our pop disciplines were letting us down. We didn't create hits. We didn't quite deliver
39872-413: The regional hit " Let's Go Trippin ' " in 1961 and launched the surf music craze, following up with songs like " Misirlou " (1962). Like Dale and his Del-Tones , most early surf bands were formed in Southern California, including the Bel-Airs , the Challengers , and Eddie & the Showmen . The Chantays scored a top ten national hit with " Pipeline " in 1963 and probably the best-known surf tune
40096-400: The rise of rock and roll in the US, found new popularity in the UK, visiting with successful tours. Lonnie Donegan 's 1955 hit " Rock Island Line " was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon 's Quarrymen (later the Beatles ), moved on to play rock and roll. While former rock and roll market in
40320-475: The romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music , soul music , and even hip hop , which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of its history. Christgau has used the term broadly to refer to popular and semipopular music that caters to his sensibility as "a rock-and-roller", including
40544-468: The same era, and by percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ , and the synthesizer. The basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation (prominent lead guitar, second chordal instrument, bass, and drums). A group of musicians performing rock music
40768-406: The same manner that David Bowie 's Eno-produced albums Low and "Heroes" were, but saying, "The difference is that Bowie and Eno were fresher in 1977 than Bono and Eno are today." The Irish media were more critical in their reviews of the album; George Byrne of the Irish Independent said, "The songs sound like they were knocked up in double-quick time and with about as much thought put into
40992-474: The same room as the mixing desk and Bono frequently sang in-progress lyrics that would need to be replaced. Gobos and wood booths were built to separate the performers' sounds as much as possible. "Some of the ideas we started out with on Achtung Baby started to come into focus on the tour as we played around with the new stage set, the TV screens, the whole concept of a TV station on the road. We found out what it could do and then we started playing around with
41216-446: The sessions; long-time Eno collaborator Daniel Lanois was busy promoting his solo album and was unavailable. Similar to the Achtung Baby sessions, Eno worked two-week shifts. The group often gave him in-progress songs to adjust and to which he could add his own personality. Initially, the band did not have a clear plan for how they would release the material being written. At the time, Clayton said, "I don't know if what we're doing here
41440-498: The singles format to albums and achieved cultural legitimacy in the mainstream. Led by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, rock musicians advanced the LP as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, initiating a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock , moved beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From
41664-413: The skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman , while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance , formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring
41888-455: The songs from the tour" and yet sounds like a "souvenir" of Zoo TV. 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". Paul Du Noyer of Q gave Zooropa
42112-410: The songs. And what would Sgt. Pepper be without the pop songs?" The Edge said that he did not think the songs were "potent", further stating, "I never thought of Zooropa as anything more than an interlude... but a great one, as interludes go. By far our most interesting." Clayton said, "It's an odd record and a favourite of mine." In 2005, Bono claimed that the album's track "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)"
42336-456: The sperm bank and unknowingly sires hundreds of children". Clyde Stubblefield , the performer of the widely sampled drum break from " Funky Drummer ", also received no royalties. DJ Shadow said that artists tended to either see sampling as a mark of respect and a means to introduce their music to new audiences, or to be protective of their legacy and see no benefit. He described the difficulty of arranging compensation for each artist sampled in
42560-496: The street with that same spirit." Island/PolyGram's and U2's marketing for Zooropa was intended to focus less on singles and more on the record as a whole, and ultimately, only three singles were released, compared to Achtung Baby ' s five singles. The first single "Numb" was released in June 1993 exclusively on VHS as a "video single". The music video was directed by Kevin Godley. The song peaked at number seven in Australia and number nine in Canada, while reaching number two on
42784-592: The supporting Zoo TV Tour in 1992. The record was a musical reinvention for the group, incorporating influences from alternative rock , industrial music , and electronic dance music into their sound. The tour was an elaborately staged multimedia event that satirised television and the viewing public's overstimulation by attempting to instill " sensory overload " in its audience. The band finished 1992 with one of their most successful years, selling 2.9 million concert tickets and reaching 10 million copies sold for Achtung Baby . Their 73 North American concerts from
43008-558: The three-octave voice of Annie Haslam . Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market. The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa , Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears , to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston , Foreigner , Kansas , Journey , and Styx . These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO , all demonstrated
43232-468: The time limit, U2 were forced to write and record songs at a more rapid pace. They continued their long-time practice of jamming in the studio. Eno used an eraseable whiteboard to give instructions and cues to the band while they jammed; he pointed at chords and various commands, such as "hold", "stop", "change", and "change back", to direct their performances. Flood recorded the material, while Eno alternated between performing with U2 and joining Flood in
43456-430: The time they had to resume touring. Moreover, Flood and Eno had to begin work on other projects. The Edge remembers everyone was telling the group, "Well, it's an EP. You did good but there's a lot more work needed to finish some of these songs." However, the band did not want to shelve the project, as they believed they were on a "creative roll" and that they would be in a completely different frame of mind if they revisited
43680-474: The top ten of 26 countries. The album's charting duration and lifetime sales of 7 million copies, however, were less than those of Achtung Baby . In 1994 , Zooropa won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album . Although the record was a success and music journalists view it as one of the group's most creative works, the band regard it with mixed feelings. U2 regained critical favour with their commercially successful 1991 album Achtung Baby and
43904-434: The tour up a bit. It'll be a fan thing. It'll be cool." Soon after the sessions commenced, Bono pushed for the band to work towards a full-length album. The Edge was initially hesitant, but saw the opportunity as a challenge to quickly record an album before returning to tour and prove the band had not become spoiled by the luxury of ample recording time. Additionally, Bono and the band's manager Paul McGuinness had discussed
44128-405: The track's lyrics are taken from phrases that Bono's father commonly used, such as "No blood is thicker than ink" and "It won't last kissing time". " Stay (Faraway, So Close!) " is a love song written for an abused woman. Bono based his lyrics to "The Wanderer" on the Old Testament 's Book of Ecclesiastes , and he modeled the song's character after the book's narrator, "The Preacher". In the song,
44352-421: The tracks " South Bronx ", " Eric B. is President " and " It's a Demo " sampled the funk and soul tracks of James Brown , particularly a drum break from " Funky Drummer " (1970), helping popularize the technique. The advent of affordable samplers such as the Akai MPC (1988) made looping easier. Guinness World Records cites DJ Shadow 's acclaimed hip hop album Endtroducing (1996), made on an MPC60, as
44576-409: The vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the U.K., the hippie movement and the wider Western counterculture movement that spread out from San Francisco in the U.S. in the 1960s, the latter of which continues to this day. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth , punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of
44800-414: The viewing public's overstimulation by attempting to instill "sensory overload" in its audience. 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. The Zooropa album was released in July 1993, halfway through
45024-408: The words of Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever , musicians "didn't just want the sound of John Bonham's kick drum, they wanted to loop and repeat the whole of ' When the Levee Breaks '." Linn said: "It was a very pleasant surprise. After 60 years of recording, there are so many prerecorded examples to sample from. Why reinvent the wheel?" Stevie Wonder's 1979 album Journey Through
45248-418: The work of the Beach Boys , formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen . The Beach Boys first chart hit, " Surfin ' " in 1961 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze
45472-533: The work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970). Reflecting on this change of trends in rock music over the past few years, Christgau wrote in his June 1970 "Consumer Guide" column that this "new orthodoxy" and "cultural lag" abandoned improvisatory, studio-ornamented productions in favor of an emphasis on "tight, spare instrumentation" and song composition: "Its referents are '50s rock, country music, and rhythm-and-blues, and its key inspiration
45696-404: The world, except as a new brand of painkiller ... In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market." Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to
45920-424: The year grossed US$ 67 million, easily the highest amount for any touring artist in 1992. The group concluded the North American "Outside Broadcast" leg of the tour on 25 November 1992, leaving them with a six-month break before the tour resumed in Europe in May 1993 with the "Zooropa" leg. Rather than use the time to rest, lead vocalist Bono and guitarist the Edge were keen to record new material. Following
46144-462: Was John Mayall ; his band, the Bluesbreakers , included Eric Clapton (after Clapton's departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green . Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith , and Derek and
46368-460: Was 1963's " Wipe Out ", by the Surfaris , which hit number 2 and number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1965. Surf rock was also popular in Europe during this time, with the British group the Shadows scoring hits in the early 1960s with instrumentals such as " Apache " and " Kon-Tiki ", while Swedish surf group the Spotnicks saw success in both Sweden and Britain. Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal pop music, particularly
46592-473: Was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock , Chick Corea and Weather Report . The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan , Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music. Reflecting on developments that occurred in rock music in
46816-430: Was an influence in the 1980s on new wave , post-punk and eventually alternative rock . From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge , Britpop , and indie rock . Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk , electronic rock , rap rock , and rap metal . Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including
47040-424: Was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers , but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock ), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream. By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of
47264-612: Was even more relevant in 2023 than when first released, and that it had not become dated: "And that's because the world U2 thought they were commenting on in 1993 was in reality just coming into existence, and it's the world we're living in now." He added, "Above all, Zooropa summons the modern desire to unplug from the grid and reconnect with something 'real' or 'authentic.'" Edna Gundersen of USA Today said in 2002, "the alien territory of Achtung Baby and Zooropa cemented U2's relevance and enhanced its cachet as intrepid explorers". Neil McCormick wrote about Zooropa , "It feels like
47488-449: Was founded in Britain), and Band of Gypsys , whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues rock bands from the southern states, like the Allman Brothers Band , Lynyrd Skynyrd , and ZZ Top , incorporated country elements into their style to produce the distinctive genre Southern rock . Early blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be
47712-399: Was left off the record was "In Cold Blood", which featured somber lyrics written by Bono in response to the Bosnian War and was previewed prior to the album's release. Other tracks that were left off the album included " Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me ", " If God Will Send His Angels ", "If You Wear That Velvet Dress", and "Wake Up Dead Man". The first was later released as a single from
47936-403: 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. Zooropa received generally favourable reviews from critics. Despite none of its three singles—" Numb ", " Lemon ", and " Stay (Faraway, So Close!) "—being hits consistently across regions, the record sold well upon release, charting in
48160-445: Was not new, the Fairlight's design and built-in sequencer simplified the process. The Fairlight inspired competition, improving sampling technology and driving down prices. Early competitors included the E-mu Emulator and the Akai S950 . Drum machines such as the Oberheim DMX and Linn LM-1 incorporated samples of drum kits and percussion rather than generating sounds from circuits. Early samplers could store samples of only
48384-401: Was owed an estimated "six-to-seven-figure sum" based on streams. In 1989, the Turtles sued De La Soul for using an unlicensed sample on their album 3 Feet High and Rising . The Turtles singer Mark Volman told the Los Angeles Times : "Sampling is just a longer term for theft. Anybody who can honestly say sampling is some sort of creativity has never done anything creative." The case
48608-440: Was popularised in the 60s with the Mellotron . In 1969, the English engineer Peter Zinovieff developed the first digital sampler, the EMS Musys . The term sample was coined by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel to describe a feature of their Fairlight CMI synthesizer, launched in 1979. While developing the Fairlight, Vogel recorded around a second of piano performance from a radio broadcast and discovered that he could imitate
48832-419: Was released as a promotional single in Mexico and the United States. 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. 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. Remastered under
49056-502: Was settled out of court and set a legal precedent that had a chilling effect on sampling in hip hop. In 1991, the songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan sued the rapper Biz Markie after Markie sampled O'Sullivan's " Alone Again (Naturally) " on the album I Need a Haircut . In Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc , the court ruled that sampling without permission infringed copyright. Instead of asking for royalties, O'Sullivan forced Markie's label Warner Bros . to recall
49280-414: Was so much imagery and information being thrown at you". In contrast to the technology-inspired lyrics of many songs, others had more domestic themes. "The First Time" was Bono's interpretation of the story of the Prodigal son , but in his version, the son decides not to return home. Similarly, "Dirty Day" was written about a character who abandons his family and returns years later to meet his son. Many of
49504-411: Was taken up by bands including Pentangle , Steeleye Span and the Albion Band , which in turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band , Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel , to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s. Folk-rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in
49728-548: Was taking place globally in the aftermath of the Second World War . Cliff Richard is credited with one of the first rock and roll hits outside of North America with " Move It " (1959), effectively ushering in the sound of British rock . Several artists, most prominently Tommy Steele from the UK, found success with covers of major American rock and roll hits before the recordings could spread internationally, often translating them into local languages where appropriate. Steele in particular toured Britain, Scandinavia, Australia,
49952-439: Was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation and the Beatles " I'm a Loser " (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds ' recording of Dylan's " Mr. Tambourine Man " which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been part of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles,
50176-430: Was the major force in American record sales and crooners , such as Eddie Fisher , Perry Como , and Patti Page , who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed. Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in
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