U2 re-entered their Dublin recording studio in October 1995, shortly before releasing an experimental/ambient album with Brian Eno, entitled Original Soundtracks 1, under the pseudonym "Passengers".

The band started to work on their ninth studio album, which was set to be finished by mid-1996 and released later that year prior to the Christmas and holiday season.

Lead vocalist Bono became interested in one of Williams' designs that resembled a supermarket, which was inspired by facades of American post-war suburban outlet stores.

[3] Bono who believed that the symbol of a supermarket, with its large number of choices and temptations, could be used as a metaphor for U2's songs, which often deal with the struggle between desire and faith.

His initial proposals to U2 featured physical designs, including a center stage surrounded by a racetrack with circling trucks and motorbikes.

[12] The idea for producing another video-based tour gained much interest when Fisher and Williams were determined to create the largest video screen in existence at that time.

Each of the pixels were mounted onto 4,500 separate aluminium tubes, which were then broken down into 187 foldable panels, spread across 22 columns, which would easily fit into two trucks.

[12] While discussing the structure to support the centralized PA system, Williams recalled a statement Bono made on the Zoo TV Tour about having a "secret fantasy to play a show underneath a set of gigantic golden arches".

Bono proposed that the mirrorball should be used as a vehicle in which the band would travel over the audience and onto the B-stage during the show, while making reference to the Parliament-Funkadelic spaceship.

Hundreds of reporters from record companies, radio stations, television networks, newspapers, and magazines were in attendance at the conference, whose location was not revealed until the night before.

On why retail was the primary theme of the tour, Bono said, "I can’t quite recall how it got to the idea of taking a supermarket on the road...I remember it making a lot of sense at the time.

In markets where the average income was low, tickets were sold for a lower price, which was enough for the band to break even and not lose any money in the process.

The website was updated constantly throughout the tour, featuring images and audio clips from various concerts, as well as live webcasts during select performances.

As the group performed, the audience was bombarded with images and colors, all designed towards the show's ironic embrace of tackiness and pop-ular culture.

There a sheet fell off exposing a huge disco ball that lit up the stadium in spinning lights while the Perfecto Mix of "Lemon" played over the PA.

After another brief break, the band would return to perform "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me", their single from 1995 for the Batman Forever soundtrack, followed by "Mysterious Ways".

The link-ups were arranged by aid worker Bill Carter, who interviewed ordinary people about their experiences of the ongoing War in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

An old style phonograph, complete with amplifying horn, was brought on stage for the song and its stylus was moved into position by Brian Eno to coincide with the tenor's vocal contribution.

[35] It was performed solo by the Edge who frequently introduced the song during the final legs of the tour by stating that the band had "rediscovered" it in Sarajevo.

Despite the subpar performance, a news story said, "For two magical hours, the rock band U2 achieved what warriors, politicians and diplomats could not: They united Bosnia."

During "Discotheque", the crew filled the stage with too much dry-ice; the Edge could not see his guitar pedal in the midst of the smoke and had to kneel down to find it by touch.

[20] Nonetheless, the quality of the performances improved greatly as certain new songs were dropped or reworked, old crowd favourites re-introduced and the setlist evolved into a more coherent order during the first two months.

By the second leg in Europe, the performances had vastly improved as evidenced by the Popheart EP that featured three songs from the first European show in Rotterdam.

It was the first time U2 had toured South America and Bono remarked that the rapturous fan response they received there helped U2 regain their confidence and appreciation for playing together.

[38] Despite its cleverness and positive critical response, many fans felt alienated by the shows; certain material from the Pop album did not go down as well as U2 might have hoped and many people did not seem to have understood its satirical nature.

(At the Los Angeles Coliseum show on 21 June, tribute was paid to the original "Prefab Four" with a guest appearance by Davy Jones of The Monkees to perform his signature song, "Daydream Believer".)

But U2's irony-drenched "big shtick" failed to satisfy many critics and fans seemingly confused by the band's new image and elaborate sets.

[45] In addition to the issues with the mechanical lemon, the large LED video screen became damaged in Washington, D.C. by a rain storm during a concert.

The video screen required time for repairs which ended up causing an entire concert in Raleigh, North Carolina to be cancelled.

[46][47] Like the band's previous Zoo TV Tour, PopMart was another huge success in terms of revenue, grossing US$173,610,864 from 3,982,657 tickets sold.