purpleoscar

NLOTH is a great album for me but I seriously don't care about massive sales and U2 should realise that most bands don't have 30 year careers with hit singles ALL THE TIME.

They basically made a Radiohead album and got the typical decent sales from it. In fact the sales are quite good for the time it was released and during a recession.

What all artists should know is that an artist's work doesn't lift itself up; the consumers of the art lift up what they want and desire. If U2 are projecting a mature band with an intellectual angle that fan base will likely be smaller than they're used to. The Joshua Tree was exactly what people wanted in the '80s so many people lifed it up very high. If the zeitgeist today is Lady Gaga then I hope U2 avoids the zeitgeist like a plague. NLOTH is a very dreamy beautiful album and I'm glad it's not mainstream. What I love about U2 is the new soundscapes you get to hear. The more innovation they discover the more precious those albums become overtime. AB still sounds fresh today. Even old songs like Drowning Man seem timeless and classic.

U2 spy planes can crash. I hope that U2 crashes with a big bang, fu*ks up the mainstream one more time and disappears off the map. With so many U2 albums they are competing against themselves and creating U2 inflation. The great songs (which are many) crowd out the good songs that lose value. It's usually when artists die or retire and there's no new material coming that the art starts increasing in value in the general public again.

OrARoundabout

At least Bono admits NLOTH was a fail...not an epic fail...but a fail none the less

mama cass

i love this album and would not call it a failure... 2 or 3 of the songs were total and utter love at first listening for me, a couple of others were growers, and even some of the ones i wasn't so keen on have won me over since hearing them live...

i think it's really shabby the idea of success simply being based on $$$$$$

last unicorn

Well, if we're realistic, success means commercial success. I'm sure NLOTH is a personal success for the band, because it's the album they wanted to make and they believe in the songs and still play many of them live. On the other hand, numbers don't lie.

I don't understand the whole fuzz anyway. With a tour like this going on, I don't see how they can not be successful. U2 have always been more of a live than an album band.

And fans will always be disappointed, if they do make a commercially successful album and if they don't. They worry too much about themselves being embarrassed if U2 don't sell more records or don't have a hit song on the radio. Like friends coming up and saying: Well you're band hasn't done quite well recently, right? Laughable. The only thing that counts for me is if I like the music or not. But the band cannot win anyway.

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BGD75

totally agree.... To please every single fan is impossible, we all know that. Some love POP, some love HTDAAB. But for the pure reason that success is unfortunately measured by the number of records sold etc. I hope that the band doesn't get cold feet and stops making music they want to make (mind you, even tho the singles haven't performed well on the radio charts, the overall album sales haven't been that bad). I like to think they are (like you mentioned) too smart for that.

Saracene

I don't think that NLOTH was in any way "challenging". It just lacked strong signature songs to lure in the casual listeners, and Boots was a terrible choice for the lead single that turned off many people right off the bat. Plus the age factor is a bitch - at this point U2 could come up with their greatest song ever but it simply would not get played on the mainstream radio here.

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corianderstem

Are U2 as good as they used to be? No.

Do I still enjoy the music they're making and the concerts they perform? Hell, yes.

Works for me.

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Screwtape2

I think the mainstream audience (which the band seems to be targeting) is capable of artist fatigue. I think the media is too. Rattle & Hum and Pop are often citied as among the band's most polarising. They both came off of peaks in U2's popularity. This decade the mainstream audience has probably heard Beautiful Day and Vertigo everywhere. They've heard them on the radio, TV, sporting events and so on. The band was at a peak in popularity. The mainstream audience has probably gotten tired of them. Anyone be it musician, politician, athlete or actor can start to get overexposed and have people grow tired of them.

The truth is they shouldn't care about the mainstream anymore. How many artists can you name that had huge selling albums in their 50's? They've reached a point where they can do anything. They should be trying to create thier best work. They should try to make albums that they feel are among their best. Until they stop forcing singles, I have to agree with GAF and Utoo. I think they aren't as good as they once were. I think though that if they threw caution to the wind they could make an album that would change my mind. They should stop sounding like a band that is desperate to stay relevant and start sounding like a band at the peak of their ability with important things to say.

kassandra

Well said.

digitize

Hmm, I personally consider NLOTH their second-best album, and really love the current era. Kiss the future?

Ladera Heights

NLOTH is their best work since JT, they've no need to worry. Its one of the best all around albums in the last few years, and I think they need to continue in that direction. I'm OK with experimental pieces with a few out-and-out catchy sell-out tunes. We've hit the wall with respect to pirated downloads, so they should be happy with what they've sold.

Relevance is not album sales anymore. Its 90,000 roaring fans and the Claw.

Rachel D.

I wish they wouldn't care so much about the radio or the charts. I don't know about the rest of the world, but the radio and the charts here in the US are full of really low-grade, manufactured drivel. Of course U2's songs won't make it up the charts here! They'd have to stoop pretty low to "fit in" with the stuff that's out there now. I hope they don't; they're old enough and successful enough now to just go for it and make whatever kind of music they want. If the general public has such bad taste that they can't appreciate it, then that's their fault, not U2's! (That might sound snobby, but it's the truth!)

KhanadaRhodes

personally, i wasn't disappointed by the album at all. i was disappointed by the inclusion of boots, only because it didn't fit on the album and it tried way too hard to be another vertigo. it was too fast, too loud, it didn't even sound like u2, but not in a good way like it was in the past when they changed sounds.

i just think it was a poor choice of a first single and gave casual fans the wrong impression about the album. if they hated the song, then they didn't buy the album because they thought that's what the album was like. if they liked it, maybe they went to itunes or something to listen to samples of other songs and was disappointed by none of the other songs sounding like it.

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Super Yo

I agree with Bono, i really think that the music of "NLOTH" could be not easy for the listeners of actual radio.

Seriously, we are listening to mediocre teen pop artists or bands that sounds all the same all the time. Or someone could tell me that people are ready to listen to songs like "WAS", "COL" or "MOS" ?

Come on guys, radio has more wallpaper music now than ever.

ozeeko

as it's been said many times on this thread: GOYB was a horrible choice for a lead single. It was too similar to Vertigo, both songs have descending glam riffs and verses where Bono speaksings one or two notes. Now, I like GOYB better than Vertigo, but it's true that Vertigo was a better radio song mainly due to its loud dumb rock chorus, whereas GOYB's chorus was a lot more subtle and dissonant. But when you're talking radio today, you can bet on a Vertigo chorus getting across much better.

That being said, GOYB probably reminded listeners too much of Vertigo, they probably thought, "this sounds like something i've heard b4" without noticing the subtle differences. But in the end, it was not different enough. Too much like Vertigo, and at the end of the day, not even that great to begin with. U2 trying to appear campy, edgy and trashy went over a lot better when they were in their early to late 30's than at 50. It probably just seemed silly and, excuse me, a tad pathetic for most listeners. Throw in the extremely earnest sounding ATYCLB and BOMB and it threw people off. "U2 is trying to sound cool now after writing such sober and "sincere" music the past 2 albums?" Vertigo was silly, yes, but it was that squeaky clean fun in the summertime kind of silliness that fit in with their image round that time. GOYB is U2 trying something a bit dirtier and darker, but without going all the way, which creates a problem because it reminds people too much of what came before. The fact that GOYB is too similar to Vertigo is what kills it, and also the fact that it's nothing spectacular anyway.

If U2 desired that huge lead off single, they would've put all their efforts into making Magnificent a smash hit. I think the one thing that prevents it from totally leaping into the stratosphere is Bono's vocals. Bono should've been singing full out on the choruses, loud and proud, with reverb and echo, the words "ONLY LOVE" shouting to the Heavens and drowning out everything that surrounds the listener at that moment. The version we were given is a really good performance but not stellar. When i heard the beach clip i thought to myself how huge this song was going to be. I imagined it being a soaring holy epic of a song that pounds instead of flows. The version we have is good and soothing and subtle (which i am all for usually) but IMO Magnificent needed to be bigger. I'm not saying the arrangement needed the kitchen sink (if anything it needed to be stripped back). Using the core instruments, bass, guitar, drums, a little light ambience provided from Eno, and finally Bono's loud and proud vocals, that song could've been huge. And promoting the hell out of it would've worked as well.