Nick Rhodes later said that "Pop Trash" was the most difficult album for the band to make: "Things felt very different without John, although he departed during "Medazzaland", he had been part of the initial writing sessions and played on several tracks of that album. Our writing process became very different for "Pop Trash", also Simon was having difficulty with some of the lyrics at this time, so I ended up writing more of them than I would have anticipated. We had a new label, Hollywood Records, which proved to be, at best, exasperating. As we did not use a producer either, it resulted in Simon, Warren and I having to focus all of our ideas whilst not having a clear vision of what we were trying to achieve with the album. Given that background, we actually think the record turned out well and closed that era."