DevilsShoes

Just pulled this off Digital Spy (it may have already been posted somewhere).


Bono: 'U2 album was too challenging'
Saturday, October 24 2009, 19:56 BST

By Catriona Wightman


WENN
Bono has admitted that he is disappointed with the lack of success for U2's recent album.

No Line On The Horizon was a number one album, but single 'Get On Your Boots' peaked at number 12 in the single charts and 'I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight' only reached number 32.

According to The Mirror, Bono is unhappy that the band didn't "pull off the pop songs".

He explained: "We weren't really in that mindset and we felt that the album was kind of an almost extinct species, and we should approach it in totality and create a mood and a feeling, and a beginning, middle and end."

The frontman added that the record might have been too complex for fans.

"I suppose we've made a work that is a bit challenging for people who have grown up on a diet of popstars," he said.


I'm not sure I'd necessarily agree that NLOTH was too challenging, I personally find the likes of AB and Zooropa far more difficult to gets to grips with. I don't think the lack of pop songs was the problem with this album either. It'd be hard pushed for Boots in particular to be more hook-laden.

I just don't think the singles were strong enough. Boots and Crazy Tonight are perfectly good pop songs but I don't believe there's anything truly great about them. Crazy Tonight strains towards something great but somehow ends up falling short IMO.

Magnificent on the other hand is a real triumph and should have been the song to launch the whole campaign.

I think it'd be easy for the casual listener to catch one of these songs in passing and conclude that U2 haven't really developed all that much since HTDAAB.

The band have always tended to work best when they have a clear vision for an album, whether it's wanting to be everything the old U2 were not on AB or getting back to the more stripped back simplicity on ATYCLB. Maybe it's a lack of focus that NLOTH suffers from. Whilst the title track, I'll Go Crazy, Boots, SUC, and Breathe are perfectly decent tracks they don't have that spark of magic than runs through Zoo Station, One, End of the World, The Fly, MW and Acrobat.

And I say this as somebody who thinks AB is overrated.