We come to the last of five one-week number ones, the end of a run of interesting short-stays at the top of the charts. And is this the most interesting?
Discothèque, by U2 (their 3rd of seven #1s)
1 week, from 9th – 16th February 1997
U2 do dance. Or at least, U2 incorporate dance beats, loops and lots of effects into a rock song. Sadly, the title is misleading – there’s no disco to be found here. Bono doing his best Gloria Gaynor is sadly still a pipe-dream, though at various points he does attempt a falsetto to rival the Bee Gees.
No, the ‘dance’ element is firmly nineties-dance – house beats with a techno-ish edge. But underpinning it all is a pretty cool guitar riff, which is fed through different layers of feedback as the song winds on. It is at times crunchy, chiming and, in its best incarnation, gloriously scuzzy. It means that for all Bono’s theatrics, ‘Discothèque’ is actually the Edge’s show, especially when you see his handlebar moustache in the video…
But more on that in a sec. As soon as this single was played on the radio, rock snobs may well have clutched their pearls in horror at what U2 had become. Dance beats! In a rock song! And remixes… by DJs! Pass the smelling salts… But the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, even Babylon Zoo, have been pushing this sound for months already, to great success. If anything the critics could have accused U2 of bandwagon jumping. But who cares if it’s not that original – it’s a fun tune. A banger that is sadly forgotten among some of U2’s bigger, more po-faced, hits.
Plus, anyone complaining about this hadn’t been listening to U2 for the better part of a decade. Large swathes of ‘Achtung Baby’ and ‘Zooropa’ had incorporated non-rock influences. Their last #1, ‘The Fly’ was well over five years earlier, but you can hear the roots of ‘Discotheque’ in it, and for most of the 1990s they had been flirting with some avant-garde stuff. So, no, this cannot claim to be the quirkiest of our recent chart-toppers – that accolade remains with White Town. Finally, what confirms this as a good song is that the band look like they’re having great fun in the video, prancing around inside a disco ball, and dressing up as The Village People.
In my posts on U2’s previous number ones, ‘The Fly’ and ‘Desire’, I may have referred to them not being my favourite band, and Bono not being my favourite frontman. But actually, their first three chart-toppers are all very good, and very different. I might even name ‘Discothèque’ as my favourite of all their #1s, if I didn’t know one of the harder-rocking ones to come. It’s definitely better than their next chart-topper, which is U2 by numbers. In fact, this, and the ‘Pop’ album, were probably the last really experimental thing that the band did. For their next LP, in 2000, they went back to the stadium rock anthems that their fanbase loves, but that always leave me a little cold.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Damn, U2 had seven No. 1s in the UK? Wow, I didn’t notice that. So that’s four more times we have to endure their presence in this blog lol.
I’m not a fan of U2 – The Joshua Tree is great and they have other songs I really like like “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Pride (In the Name of Love)”, “Beautiful Day” and “One but that’s it. Never heard this song before. First couple of listens, do not like it. That whole electronic dance/industrial/rock sound they helped introduce in the mainstream that so, so many bands copied in the mid-to-late-90s is just not my thing. I’d rather listen to Nickelback at their most boring and bland than whatever this is.
Oh God no, not Nickelback. Never go Nickelback… The songs you listed are U2 at their stodgiest, and their most pompous. I’m not their biggest fan either, but at least on songs like ‘Discotheque’ they were trying things out, sounding like they might have been having fun. And yeah, the sound might have been overdone eventually, and may well have led us to nu-metal, but I’d take it over corporate rock yawners like ‘Beautiful Day’ (their next #1).
I think at this point I’ve come to realise I like my rockstars with a little pretention and pomp haha. Especially when it’s sincere. Maybe the Nickelback comment was a bit far – I don’t hate Nickelback like a lot of people do (them, Linkin Park, Green Day and Fall Out Boy were like the big rock bands when I was little) and they’ve got some great songs.
I think I just don’t respond well to this 90s electronic dance/rock. If you listen to albums from the mid-to-late-90s, you find so many bands – even The Rolling Stones on Bridges to Babylon – were ripping off U2 and to a lesser extent Nine Inch Nails. I do applaud U2 I don’t mind it in the whole dance/rock fusion in the 80s or 2000s-present, but in the 90s, especially with that hip hop/dance drum beat that it seems so many rock bands were using, it gets so tiresome.
I love “Beautiful Day”. That’s the type of arena rock that I like from U2.
I agree that the electronic dance rock did get old by the end of the 90s: U2, NIN, Depeche Mode, even the Stones…
Post 2000, for every worthy, slightly pompous song that U2 did, they always remembered to back it up with a rocker. ‘Elevation’, ‘Vertigo’ etc etc… So they get a pass from me, on the whole.
Love experimental U2, they showed they had listened to a lot of (undeserved, but accurate) criticism about being over-blown and pompous and dialled down the rock and played around with other genres, Discotheque came out of the blue and was fab, exciting stuff. I went to see them at Wembley Stadium in the 90’s and they very much are a live experience, big venues bring out the goose-bumps with their material where other acts might fall flat. It helped that the stage went right into the audience so you were more part of the experience. One of the pre-stage playlisted songs was The Monkees’ Daydream Believer, and a whole stadium of people singing along in anticipation was an event in itself….!
I saw them in the early 90s and really didn’t listen to them again until around 1999 and 2000… This is alright but I like their Americana Sound the best like Angel of Harlem. This is one of the few I like in this recent span.
At least they were trying something else out, though they got a lot of stick for it. I also like the Desire/Angel of Harlem era, but quite often U2 leave me a bit cold
It depends on what era to me…I wasn’t a fan until Rattle and Hum…their most successful era was before that…but I did love Sunday Bloody Sunday… so yea it depends on the song…they were great live.