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The mid-tempo rock ballad “Stay” - parenthetically titled “Faraway, So Close!” after the Wim Wenders fantasy of the same name about angels in Berlin - is more sober, with intimations of domestic violence, but it has a protagonist who spends her time “up with the static and the radio.” She’s “dressed up like a car crash,” and the next track promises “Daddy’s Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car” money in the 1990s could do more than summon light. “A man captures color,” Bono sings on “Lemon.” “He turns his money into light to look for her.” Time dissolves on “Babyface,” he lusts after a woman caught “in freeze-frame.” He says, “I’ve got slow motion on my side.” She’s coming “from outer space,” we hear satellite transmissions have unbound man’s desire from any fixed moment or place. “Babyface” and “Lemon” are lithe and sinuous celebrations of video, the former for its erotic potential and the latter for its capacity to preserve and commodify the present. But Bono has always been helplessly earnest, even as an ironist, and whatever his intentions, on Zooropa his celebration of the victories of capitalism and technological innovation sounded sincere. U2 had reinvented itself for the self-conscious 1990s as a band of elaborate ironic poses: postmodern compositions built from industrial and club music influences, a stadium tour constructed from video collages, with Trabants - the iconically shitty East German car - recycled as lighting equipment. The song ended in open embrace of the future: “She’s gonna dream up the world she’s gonna live in/ She’s gonna dream out loud.” “ Vorsprung durch Technik,” he offered, swiping a slogan from the German car company Audi. Over burbling ambiance - which might as well have been manufactured in parody of the Brian Eno–produced slow-build guitar lattices that the Edge used for signature U2 singles of the previous decade - Bono mouthed koans of tech Utopianism. That was the ethereal, beguiling question bubbling over the synth swell of Zooropa’s opening and title track.