If the success of Achtung Baby taught U2 anything, it was okay to have a little fun. The band never sounded so loose. The record is 100 percent byproduct of the ambitious ZooTV tour. Moments of brilliance - "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" - balance the experiments gone wrong - "Some Days." In between are several songs that did not survive after ZooTV, unfortunately.

The fate of Zooropa tied to its image as a companion piece, or leftovers, of the Achtung Baby sessions. While Zooropa is certainly less cohesive than its predecessors, it features some of the band's finest moments. Lesser bands would kill for leftovers this good.

Film and voyeurism is a heavy theme throughout the record, starting with "Babyface." Not a seedy kind of voyeurism, but more about what happens in your imagination while viewing faces on a screen. Or viewing colors on a screen as is the case with "Lemon."

"Lemon" is a prime example of what is so appealing about Zooropa. Within these odd, electronic dance tracks, there are moments of pure emotional bliss. Bono sings in a falsetto and the band intones a kind of monotonous chorus behind him. Then in the middle of nowhere, Bono lets out a "wooh." Long and sustained, while the band sings Midnight is where the day begins. There is nothing outstanding in the words, but the performance in that moment lifts your heart out of your chest. Those little moments are throughout Zooropa.

I instantly fell in love with "Stay (Faraway, So Close)." It is the kind of song you do not want to end. Just keep playing that guitar loop forever. "Stay" has another incredible moment when Bono quietly roars near the end - Stay and the night would be enough. One of the strangest additions to Zooropa is "The First Time." It is the barest song on the record and seems out of place between the white-funk throwaway "Some Days" and the throbbing "Dirty Day." Then you realize this song is essential, not just how it stands alone as an incredible song but also in how it is the prime song to display what the record is all about. Finding truth and light in the darkness. As much as U2 is able to have some fun, they have not strayed from their message.

One song sums up U2 in the 1990s, "The Wanderer." It is not even Bono who sings it. Johnny Cash did. Only Johnny Cash could. In six lines, he sums it all up:

I went out there
In search of experience
To taste and to touch
And to feel as much
As a man can
Before he repents

Both Zooropa and Achtung Baby, and even the future Pop, held personal significance for me. Speaking to me in only the way music can. So when the kids were playing their Limp Bizkit and Korn, it was easy to feel disconnected to what was going on around me. These U2 records connected me to something else that felt genuine. Felt closer to my experience and what goes on in my head.

Yeah I left with nothing
But the thought you'd be there too
Looking for you

You could be many different things. Experience. Taste. Touch. Acceptance. Repentance. Something. Anything.