Thought this might be interesting to highlight...

[www.dailydot.com]


Last week, U2 broke the Internet, but not really in a good way. The Bono-led band’s Songs of Innocence, which U2 has hinted may be its last record, was released as part of Apple’s keynote event and dished out to iTunes subscribers for free. The album reportedly cost Apple $100 million, a figure the company is likely to eat. Rather than generating the kind of hype Apple is accustomed to, Songs of Innocence generated a huge Twitter backlash, with the company posting a guide on how to remove the album from your library on its support page. Most damningly, Wired’s Vijith Assar called the “devious giveaway” no better than “spam.”

This is quite a comedown for a band who, just over a decade ago, could still call itself the biggest band in the world. Their 2000 record, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, not only sold a staggering 12 million copies, but it gave the band a renewed relevance in the wake of 9/11, when songs like “Walk On” came to symbolize an America figuring out how to pick up the pieces. Songs like the anthemic “One” had always found a universal relevance, but this was a reminder of exactly why U2 was so popular: It united the types of people who would normally never agree on liking anything.

But in 2014, they seem to be disliked with the same intensity that they used to be patriotically beloved (despite their overt Irish heritage). The reason why depends on your perspective. According to a webpage helpfully titled “Why U2 Sucks,” the litany of reasons runs the gamut of “they are pretentious” to “they are derivative” and “they just plain suck.” The Guardian theorizes, however, that we hate U2 because we hate Bono, while the New York Observer thinks they’re the Guy Fieri of music, which one assumes means selling bombastic, tacky crap to as wide an audience as possible.

Hating U2 is something of a modern Rorschach test, and more than anything, it’s the same brand management issue that befalls just about any band that aspires to be the biggest in the world. The moment a group aims to be the one act everyone likes, they become the one “no one likes,” or at least the one the Internet most likes to dogpile on. In a roundup of songs that broke their respective bands, CBC rounds up all the usual suspects of wildly popular bands a bunch of people now hate for their own ink-blob reasons: Coldplay, Mumford and Sons, Dave Matthews Band, and Weezer.

Each of these groups started their careers either well-liked or beloved (especially in the case of Weezer), only to find themselves a punchline among the kinds of folks who want to differentiate their music taste from the rest of the pack. Coldplay is, even among its most fervent detractors, far from the worst by any measure, but there’s a performative aspect to disliking them, one that says more about you as a consumer than the band itself. Most people who hate Nickelback, widely considered the most hated band in music, can’t even name a single Nickelback song.

Although CBC cites “Discotheque” (from Pop, U2’s much-derided experiment in excess) as the moment the public turned on them, it was most likely Apple that did U2 in. The wide success of 1991’s Achtung Baby launched a decade-long experiment by the band into art rock, as Bono attempted to bring the avant garde into the mainstream. Although 1993’s Zooropa won the Grammy for Best Alternative Album, Bono never wanted U2 to be an "alternative" (read: niche) group, your vinyl-hoarding friend’s favorite band. They wanted to be everyone’s favorite band, which is one of the many reasons Pop was such a disaster; the band was so busy putting together the tour for the record, a comment on their global influence as much as it was its intended statement on the state of capitalism, that they were rushed into completing a record they didn’t like. It was an artist statement in search of an album.

Pop was, indeed, an album of excess, but it least had ambition. Their aforementioned follow-up record, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, settled for a more radio-friendly, mainstream sound, teaching the band the wrong lessons: The secret to success is to force everyone to like you. They mistook ubiquity for acclaim. When How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb came out, it featured more of the mom rock that made its predecessor a success, along with an iPod commercial that put Bono singing “Vertigo” on every screen in America. For a band who was so keen to bite corporate America’s hand just seven years prior, it looked suspiciously like selling out.

As someone who likes many U2 records and dislikes many others, their recent output isn’t so much an issue of selling your soul to the man as much as deciding to be a certain type of band, one that might not please the Achtung Baby faithful. If you liked the kind of music they were making with “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” you might like No Line on the Horizon, a 2009 album filled with middle-brow jams. This was a time when even their politics seemed repackaged to fit their new global mindset. Instead of their signature songs about Irish pride, Bono wrote hippy-dippy lyrics about world peace that could play while you browse the aisles at Hobby Lobby.

That shift particularly affected the public perception of Bono. As the Guardian notes, the singer often comes off as “holier than thou” to his detractors, “rich beyond his wildest dreams and hanging out with princes, presidents and preachers [but one who] nonetheless won’t shut up about poor people.” For some, he’s less the musical poet who wrote “One” than a celebrity blowhard who wants to browbeat them into caring, like Susan Sarandon or Sean Penn. There’s a general mistrust around celebrity activism, and when you throw in Bono’s penchant for religious imagery, it reeks of Kanye West.

However, the band’s over-the-top tendencies aren’t a new criticism. According to Yahoo’s Chris Willman, the band nearly jumped the shark back in 1988 with the release of Rattle and Hum, a blues-infused record that paid tribute to many of the band’s influences, from Elvis Presley to B.B. King, a tribute to their influences that represented a seemingly “back to roots move.” “But there seemed to be more hubris than humility in the footage of their arena shows,” Willman argues. “And the massive roll-out for both album and film didn't shout ‘back to basics.’ With that mixed a message being sent out, was it any wonder that the reaction was also all over the place?”

Oddly enough, the band’s brand image had already been carved out by this point; Anton Corbijn’s “stony-faced” black-and-white imagery for The Joshua Tree became iconically associated with everything fans both loved and hated about the group. The difference is, though, that in 1988, their careers had time to recover through albums that did the necessary damage control; Achtung Baby is so undeniably, earth-shatteringly great that even the biggest Bono haters had to admit that the man knew what he was doing onstage. After a decade of releasing middling commercial jingles, it’s hard to make the same rationalization, or even what made U2 good to begin with.

This is a struggle that all aging bands face, where what was once cool starts to lose its luster as those who used to play your favorite songs start to wither before you, as in the case of Aerosmith or REO Speedwagon, the latter relegated to state fairs. You might be seeing The Rolling Stones at your local stadium, but you’re not going for the thrill of watching Mick Jagger in 2014. You’re going for a reminder of the performer he was in 1965, when “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” brought together people who might not even call themselves rock music fans.

U2 might have thought they were getting in on the surprise album bandwagon, as everyone from Beyoncé to Skrillex is doing it, but the biggest surprise is how little it mattered. Bono has spent the last three and a half decades trying to get everyone to like him, but the greatest PR coup he could ever pull is to finally stop caring.

Great article. Next time I give something away, I'll see if I can get a $100 million for it.

Bono has spent the last three and a half decades trying to get everyone to like him, but the greatest PR coup he could ever pull is to finally stop caring.




Exactly! By the way, can we get that fella to take his cap off?

Yes, if the number is accurate, quite shocking really.

Funny how two such uber-successful organizations (Apple/U2) can be so out of touch.

The $100 million is bullshit. I don't understand why that keeps getting mentioned.

Yeah, a great article. Very interesting stuff. I haven't followed the career of U2 closely, since their music hasn't ever made such a huge impact on me, but they have almost always been around (for me), and their success has been phenomenal, and I think we could say they've been the point of reference when our heroes's doings are put into contemporary perspective, especially when huge tours and 'relevance' are concerned. The article gives great insight - of course, a bit provocatively - to the 'relevance' aspect especially.

Thanks for posting!

- Doxa

This guy has learned to let all of this "White Noise" to just roll off his back..





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-09-25 19:39 by U2Stonesfan.

What a load of BS.

The thesis, the distribution of a free copy of Songs via Apple being "quite a comedown", is presented as fact but is based only on tweets: "volatile" evidence, may I say (unfortunately the pun doesn't translate well to English - volatile also means bird in Italian). Unfortunately nowadays, paraphrasing a famous brocard, quod non est in internet non est in mundo (more or less, what's not in the internet, doesn't exist) ...

It would be interesting to know how many apple customers have actually cancelled the album. It will be interesting to see if the next tour will be a fiasco.

I you ask me, I do think that the vast majority of apple customers don't give a damn if they have just another album in their library, and I am sure that the next tour will be successful as always.

The music business is - indeed - a business. A peculiar one, that's for sure, because it involves "art".

What seems to disturb many is the fact of hugely successful business models which ALLEGEDLY involve very low, if any, "artistic" content.

I gave up long time ago getting involved in these kind of arguments.

If I like something, I like it, and the suspect of being the "victim" of a marketing strategy doesn't bother me at all.



C



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2014-09-25 21:17 by liddas.

What does this LP release with Apple have to do with their next tour? I can't see that having any impact. NO LINE ON THE HORIZON flopped and they had the biggest tour ever in the history of rock tours. U2 fans will go see them.

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GasLightStreet
What does this LP release with Apple have to do with their next tour? I can't see that having any impact. NO LINE ON THE HORIZON flopped and they had the biggest tour ever in the history of rock tours. U2 fans will go see them.

You may be right, they may just be in that rarified air where it doesn't matter what they put out for new material, the crowds will show.

Having said that, I actually like the new album...but the article shows that U2 isn't cool anymore, which I don't think you can say about the Stones. They are still very cool.

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treaclefingers

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GasLightStreet
What does this LP release with Apple have to do with their next tour? I can't see that having any impact. NO LINE ON THE HORIZON flopped and they had the biggest tour ever in the history of rock tours. U2 fans will go see them.

You may be right, they may just be in that rarified air where it doesn't matter what they put out for new material, the crowds will show.

Having said that, I actually like the new album...but the article shows that U2 isn't cool anymore, which I don't think you can say about the Stones. They are still very cool.

Most any artist or group goes thru a stage where they don't sell like they use to, or trends change. Just wait ten years and suddenly they've reached iconic status, or welcome nostalgia for fans of a certain age.

i used to be a big u2 fan, the early albums fom boy to the joshua tree i felt was some of the best music ever made, but around 1987-89 as i got more into the stones i seemed to get out of u2, still bought the albums but felt the band stopped progessing and im sure many folk have said the same about the stones so i see the similarities.

im not sure what it is, but i still dig the stones in a way i never do about u2 anymore despite both groups making the vast majority of thier best songs in the earlier stages of their respective careers.

i just feel sometimes though that u2 lost thier musical energy a long time ago, and the songs sound quite atmospheric and nice at times but lacks the grit of the stones latter stuff.

but no doubt a lot of the hatred to u2 is unjustified, as they produced some great songs in the past and were one of the best groups ever.

Well, once U2's time has passed, the public won't have to worry about knocking any more rock stars off their perch, because U2 was probably the last we'll see at that level. Rock music just isn't at a place in society anymore to create supergroups globally like, say, the 60s thru the 90s.

I was really into U2 as a teenager and into their early work till the Unforgettable fire, the Joshua Tree, their homage to American music was in my humble opinion not entirely successful. This is not by any means a bad album, but it made me realise that when it comes to understanding and re-interpreting US roots music nobody as ever come close to the Stones. They reached the true essence and the core of US root music and came out with something sublime and inimitable



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-09-26 00:02 by desertblues68.

U2 .... have heard 'em from a distance but have never let 'em on the stereo



ROCKMAN

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Rockman
U2 .... have heard 'em from a distance but have never let 'em on the stereo

People tell me you have the new Nickleback box set though.

No way... they lie .... but I've driven thru the razor-backs late at night



ROCKMAN

Some great songs on How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. A few good ones on No Line on the Horizon as well. I haven't listened to the new LP yet. I could care less about the author's hypothesis. I think he doesn't like U2 to begin with. Good songs good album, bad songs bad album. Simple right? Everything else is extraneous. This ain't your father's music business anymore.

I get a kick out of local bar/pub bands hate Nickelback, yet defend themselves for dressing up like women and playing Poison songs.

"The Bono-led band’s Songs of Innocence, which U2 has hinted may be its last record"

It was stated upon free release that this is the first of three albums set for release over the coming 18 months. And the reason no-one can name a Nickleback song they hate is because as soon as they hear the lead singer start trying to sh*t razor blades they turn the channel - I can't hack "R and B" music or rubbish from "Pitbull" either but even though I'm subjected to it all at the gym I switch off to it cos it's crap - and I don't know any titles of these songs.

Many ppl may have been pissed about the new U2 lp being in their iTunes but mainly those that only have such trivial things to be concerned with would fleetingly give a toss. If someone is so incensed at something like this they have either series anger/psychological issues or are lucky enough to have this be the worst thing in the world for them.

Rag Bono and U2 all they want but the album will still sell in the millions and will be followed by I'm sure (yet another) the biggest tour ever.

I'm basically indifferent to all of this so take no side. This article no matter how well written will be soon be forgotten by all that read it - including any of the pending 10 odd million people that will go see them in the coming year or two.

Yeah they really need to go into damage control.

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OzHeavyThrobber
"The Bono-led band’s Songs of Innocence, which U2 has hinted may be its last record"

It was stated upon free release that this is the first of three albums set for release over the coming 18 months. And the reason no-one can name a Nickleback song they hate is because as soon as they hear the lead singer start trying to sh*t razor blades they turn the channel - I can't hack "R and B" music or rubbish from "Pitbull" either but even though I'm subjected to it all at the gym I switch off to it cos it's crap - and I don't know any titles of these songs.

Many ppl may have been pissed about the new U2 lp being in their iTunes but mainly those that only have such trivial things to be concerned with would fleetingly give a toss. If someone is so incensed at something like this they have either series anger/psychological issues or are lucky enough to have this be the worst thing in the world for them.

Rag Bono and U2 all they want but the album will still sell in the millions and will be followed by I'm sure (yet another) the biggest tour ever.

I'm basically indifferent to all of this so take no side. This article no matter how well written will be soon be forgotten by all that read it - including any of the pending 10 odd million people that will go see them in the coming year or two.

Yeah they really need to go into damage control.

I think all you've said here can be viewed as gospel and crap at the same time.

It comes down to the quality of the album. If it were a crap album, that happened to be promoted in this massive way, U2'd be in a lot of trouble.

But...it happens to be good. If this were the promotion for No Line On The Horizon, I think you'd have a big problem.

The single though is great and so is the album, and that is the gospel truth (IMHO).

The opening for the "Zoo TV" concerts is still one of my favorite openings ever. The new album has grown for me. Could it have fit in right before "Achtung Baby?"

Bono is dead.

He's now perceived as the mega deal-maker of the "U2 Inc." a guy who lives only with people from the 1% upper-crust.
Previously he was perceived as the rock-star useful idiot who shakes hands with war criminals (Blair and Bush Jr).

I'm not sure which one is the worse...

I'm seeing The Rolling Stones at my local stadium, for the thrill of watching Mick Jagger in 2014.
Nothing to do whatsoever with "a reminder of the performer he was in 1965, when “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” brought together people who might not even call themselves rock music fans"!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-09-27 17:22 by RoughJusticeOnYa.

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treaclefingers

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GasLightStreet
What does this LP release with Apple have to do with their next tour? I can't see that having any impact. NO LINE ON THE HORIZON flopped and they had the biggest tour ever in the history of rock tours. U2 fans will go see them.

You may be right, they may just be in that rarified air where it doesn't matter what they put out for new material, the crowds will show.

Having said that, I actually like the new album...but the article shows that U2 isn't cool anymore, which I don't think you can say about the Stones. They are still very cool.

I think U2 fans like getting new material, even when it's not "great" like NLOTH was. ACHTUNG was not out of left field but from out of space. Then they played a majority of it for the ZOO TV/Zooropa tours. Like the Stones with SOME GIRLS they clearly believed in their new record and let the audience know it.

Neither band has done that since. Perhaps that's a normal thing? At some point a band plays most of an LP and then after that it's just... fodder for the set list.

Perhaps the 2015 U2 tour will present a new challenge - will they play 4-6 tracks from SOI? Maybe 6-8 tracks? Maybe just the i-Phone commercial single!? It certainly won't be in football stadiums.

iTunes
iPhone
iPad
iTV
iCamera
iPencil

What's up with i-Phone getting scrambled!!?? That's hilarious.

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OzHeavyThrobber
"The Bono-led band’s Songs of Innocence, which U2 has hinted may be its last record"

It was stated upon free release that this is the first of three albums set for release over the coming 18 months. And the reason no-one can name a Nickleback song they hate is because as soon as they hear the lead singer start trying to sh*t razor blades they turn the channel - I can't hack "R and B" music or rubbish from "Pitbull" either but even though I'm subjected to it all at the gym I switch off to it cos it's crap - and I don't know any titles of these songs.

Many ppl may have been pissed about the new U2 lp being in their iTunes but mainly those that only have such trivial things to be concerned with would fleetingly give a toss. If someone is so incensed at something like this they have either series anger/psychological issues or are lucky enough to have this be the worst thing in the world for them.

Rag Bono and U2 all they want but the album will still sell in the millions and will be followed by I'm sure (yet another) the biggest tour ever.

I'm basically indifferent to all of this so take no side. This article no matter how well written will be soon be forgotten by all that read it - including any of the pending 10 odd million people that will go see them in the coming year or two.

Yeah they really need to go into damage control.

User agreements are never read. So of course the U2 album showing up on their phones is offensive and very Big Brotheresque. Uh huh - because you agreed to it. And then they have the nerve to not know how to delete an album from iTunes. People love to complain. They can't give it away? Those are the same people that obviously wouldn't buy it either.

Nickelback. I've heard them. Awful. Indeed hating (not liking, etc) a band and hearing them and changing it doesn't equate to 'you can't name one song'. Goddamn right I can't. Why would I?

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GasLightStreet
ACHTUNG was not out of left field but from out of space. Then they played a majority of it for the ZOO TV/Zooropa tours. Like the Stones with SOME GIRLS they clearly believed in their new record and let the audience know it.

Neither band has done that since.

Not true. When I saw U2 in Berlin in 2009 they opened with 4! songs from NLOTH and they played 7 songs from that album that night - pretty much what they did during the whole 2009. They dropped some of the new songs from the setlist in 2010 - they played 4 songs from NLOTH when I saw them in Vienna in 2010 + they played 2 new songs, one of them being an early version Every Breaking Weave from The Songs Of Innocence.

I checked random shows from previous tours:

in Miami in 1998 they played 9 songs from POP
in Chicago in 2001 they played 7 songs from ATYCLB
in Berlin in 2005 they played 7 songs from HTDAAB
in Berlin in 2009 they played 7 songs from NLOTH

Whatever you think of U2, they ALWAYS play a lot of the new album on their tour, at least on the early legs.

I like, even love, much of U2's music.

However, I don't like celebrities - no matter how much I might like their art - pretending to know what's right for all of us. Bruce, Fogerty, Neil, Jackson Browne, Mellencamp, etc., even Mick, get the clue. Bono is one of the worst at this.

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Happy24

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GasLightStreet
ACHTUNG was not out of left field but from out of space. Then they played a majority of it for the ZOO TV/Zooropa tours. Like the Stones with SOME GIRLS they clearly believed in their new record and let the audience know it.

Neither band has done that since.

Not true. When I saw U2 in Berlin in 2009 they opened with 4! songs from NLOTH and they played 7 songs from that album that night - pretty much what they did during the whole 2009. They dropped some of the new songs from the setlist in 2010 - they played 4 songs from NLOTH when I saw them in Vienna in 2010 + they played 2 new songs, one of them being an early version Every Breaking Weave from The Songs Of Innocence.

I checked random shows from previous tours:

in Miami in 1998 they played 9 songs from POP
in Chicago in 2001 they played 7 songs from ATYCLB
in Berlin in 2005 they played 7 songs from HTDAAB
in Berlin in 2009 they played 7 songs from NLOTH

Whatever you think of U2, they ALWAYS play a lot of the new album on their tour, at least on the early legs.

Wow! I thought they only played 4 or 5 songs from the album!

I saw the PopMart tour. Just found a setlist site and wow you're not kidding did they ever play the shit out of that album, even into 1998!


U2 PopMart Tour
PopMart 3rd leg: North America
1997-11-21: Louisiana Superdome - New Orleans, Louisiana

Mofo
I Will Follow
Gone
Even Better Than The Real Thing
Last Night On Earth
Until The End Of The World
New Year's Day
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
All I Want Is You
Staring At The Sun
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet The Blue Sky / America (snippet)
Please
Where The Streets Have No Name

encore(s):
Discothèque / Love To Love You Baby (snippet) / Life During Wartime (snippet) / I'm Afraid Of Americans (snippet) / Stayin' Alive (snippet)
If You Wear That Velvet Dress
With Or Without You
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
Mysterious Ways
One
Wake Up Dead Man

Perhaps the ZOO TV tour's setlist sticks in my mind the way it does because the press at that time kept talking about how U2 was "challenging" their audience.