![]() But when Horizon proved to be the band’s lowest-selling effort since 1997’s Pop, it was obvious that some course-correction was needed in order for them to stay even remotely germane, which, if Bono’s self-penned hagiography is to be believed, is something that U2 is perpetually striving for. Since then, Bono and The Edge wrote the heavily-derided music for the spectacular Broadway failure Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and only emerged occasionally to provide news about the progress of their new album (that Danger Mouse was working on it, that Adele’s producer Paul Epworth and OneRepublic’s songwriting kingpin Ryan Tedder were brought in a bit later in the game, clarifying that Epworth and Tedder weren’t replacing Danger Mouse, etc). And worse, it’s been even longer since they put out anything that could be considered even marginally culturally relevant.ĭon’t forget: the group’s last album, 2009’s No Line on the Horizon, was massively hyped, but while a majority of print publications tripped over themselves to lavish praise upon it (something that Rolling Stone still continues to do like clockwork), online publications were unafraid to question its merits, lead single “Get On Your Boots” proving to be one of the most bone-headed things the band had ever been associated with. Yet most publications are speaking to a very specific subset of readers who are already familiar with standard pop music history, as a lot of young people don’t know who the band is for good reason: they have been out of the spotlight for a very long time. There are a lot of questions that have surrounded U2 since the highly-publicized surprise release of their 13th full-length, Songs of Innocence: how will this effect future album releases and promotion? Despite being available in over a half-billion iTunes account, what does it mean when it was actually downloaded only 200,000 times in the U.S.? Which record label actually put out the album ( Rolling Stone lists Universal Music Group, iTunes lists Island, the New York Times lists Interscope, and the band’s own website fails to list a record label at all)? Why isn’t their halfway-decent charity track “ Invisible” included?Īnd, for some younger people, the biggest and most important question actually proved to be indicative of the response to the album overall: who is U2 anyways?īy associating themselves with a massive media stunt of this nature, the band can’t be too surprised that a great majority of the reviews that have come out since the album’s release have talked about the album in much larger “future of the industry” standards, most publications rushing out reviews-which, in some cases, doubled as thinkpieces-as a way to garner traffic instead of actually giving the music any real consideration (these rapid-fire critiques proving to be something that U2’s own website was more than happy to round up). “I literally only know who U2 is because of that one entourage episode.” - 9/12/14 There’s nowhere to hide in them: clear thoughts, clear melodies.” - Bono to Rolling Stone, 9/9/14 And we wanted to have the discipline of the Beatles or the Stones in the Sixties, when you had real songs. “Some of the music out there now that people call pop, it’s not pop - it’s just truly great. ![]()
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