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.

coolian2

i hope they decide to stay the course though, because i don't think i'll be hanging around for another atyclb.

__________________
i like a lot of bad music

GirlsAloudFan

Pretty simple: They just aren't as good as they used to be.

Not a big deal, they're approaching their 50's. Can't keep it up forever. Everything has an expiration date.

financeguy

Indeed. It's a deeply troubling article, as it indicates U2 are mainly interested in popularity for its own sake.

Screwtape2

First off, I find it a bit funny having that first line of the article and in the next line have it say that it was a number one album.

I personally found the line about the album possibly being too complex for fans a bit insulting and in bad taste. For a fanbase that bought Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Pop, I don't think the "failure" of NLOTH is a result of it being too complex. Fans are an easy scapegoat. The truth for NLOTH not selling as much as they hoped is not restricted to one scapegoat. It starts though with possibly unrealistic expectations.

I'm not freaking out but hearing this stuff is discomforting for SOA hopes. I don't think they'd go to this extreme but I agree with Coolian that I don't think I could take another ATYCLB.

U2opra

As much as I like NLOTH, I find it part of the trilogy that goes with ATYCLB and HTDAAB (certainly the tour setlist shows that). Some of the songs from NLOTH are certainly also what you might expect on HTDAAB, like Crazy tonight for example. I think on this basis, it hasn't really gave too much of a drastic change for average joe to go "that's interesting" and take notice. It's a shame because while we may see it, a lot of more casual listeners may not, and certainly casual listeners do indeed make an impact on sales too.

NLOTH is a great album, (I know I'm gonna be blasted for this) but I must admit U2 were playing it a bit safe with some of the songs on the album and maybe could've done with a little bit more experimentation - there was a little bit too much of that familiar sound echoing from HTDAAB at times.

rjhbonovox

Amen to that brother. It is worrying how Bono has worded this article about their lastest album. Its a great album. Its their best since Pop, another flop. But when you are pushing 50 and yer album is not full of pop hits your not going to sell shitloads. It would be very embarrasing to see U2 go and create something similar to ATYCLB and break out another Beautiful Day. I like Beautiful Day but I just hope U2 don't go that route for the sake of selling records to the masses!

coolian2

exactly. the only thing that worries me about criticism of stuff like no line on the horizon is that is impacts their decisions on future work. i wish they'd just decide "fuck it, we're big enough and rich enough to do what we/the omg reel fans want" and go for it.

you saw them hinting at it with no line on the horizon and some of the 360 tour, but instead of stepping forward it feels like this attitude is regressing again.

__________________
i like a lot of bad music

last unicorn

What's Bono supposed to say? Wow, it's great we didn't sell many copies of our last album and didn't have hit singles? Come on, that would be stupid. Of course they are disappointed, we all are. Not because it's a bad album, but because we all expected it to do better. But Bono and the band even said that having hit singles wasn't on their mind when they made the album. Fans seem to hate the thought of the band making radiofriendly, mainstream music, but at the same time hate the thought of them not having hit singles.

And I don't think he meant the album is too complex for fans. It's more like: For people who are used to listen to the music that's in the charts today, and I kind of agree with that. Having hit singles isn't really about being good, it isn't about quality.

Articles like that will never be able to turn my opinion on the album around. I love NLOTH and hope U2 continue to follow this path. They have nothing to worry about with a tour like this going on. It's all about media negativity, I hope they won't stop believing in making exciting and even more innovative music.

__________________

intedomine

When casual fans buy albums, it's usually based on how much they favour the promotional singles. Did Boots fail to achieve this favourability? Yeah, probably, but I still wouldn't say it was a bad choice or too complex for radio listeners.

I can't help but feel that the commercial letdown of NLOTH is not due to a lack of pop sensibility, but rather that the commercial mainstream that U2 were selling to were just not really wanting U2 at the time. They've got their Kings Of Leon and MGMT and Pink at the moment, a new U2 release wasn't really that essential to their musical needs.

In Australia in particular, the radio stations rarely played Sexy Boots or Magnificent. There was other stuff going around that was already striking a chord with the masses, U2 weren't doing anything commercially essential.

Who knows, later in 2012 or back in 2002, Get On Your Boots could have been a smash hit number one single all around the globe, but it just wasn't gonna happen in 2009. That's just the way it is...


Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing U2 simultaenously release a Rubin album and Songs of Ascent. Radical thing to do, but the Rubin album can be the mainstream-targeting showcase of potential singles, while Songs of Ascent can be whatever it in fact actuallyis, something more for the harder core fans.

Indeed, a unique selling point for both albums is that they are two completely separate albums being released on the same day, that is bound to garner massive publicity.

digitize

I second this post.

U2387

Agree with everything you said here.

I did not interpret Bono's comments as "stupid, unsophisticated fan base was not ready for this kind of material." I interpreted them exactly as you say- the 18-35 casual music listener crowd that buys albums, listens to radio, etc, was brought up on pop crap like N SYNC, Britney, Lady GaGa, etc and shit "rock" like Nickelback. They also were brought up in the whole mentality of the music industry today which seems to want to get a huge single out of, for example, Nickelback, and then ride the song for 4 years. Make a bunch of money, then they go away.

People seem to forget that when U2 are talking about their fan base, that they, unlike any other band EVER, are talking to alot of people who have become fans since 2000 and consider ATYCLB and Bomb their first albums. For this significant part of the base, brought up with 90s boy bands and Britney on the radio, NLOTH would be challenging.

Very few U2 fans my age will mention songs older than Beautiful Day. It is the rare U2 2000s new fan that actually goes back and explores and realizes how truly awesome albums like War, UF, JT and AB are.

ATYCLB and HTDAAB, though not "pop" in the sense of the artists mentioned above, went with this mentality and both albums were a collection of potentially huge singles as a result.

I too hope they continue in the NLOTH vein. I do not think commercial success and quality work focusing on the whole album as U2 envisions it now(more reflective, companion piece to NLOTH) are mutually exclusive.

I just think choice of lead singles but more importantly how they are promoted makes all the difference these days. Of course, U2 did a major NLOTH promo tour. However, where was the promotion for Boots 6 weeks earlier when it hit the radio? As much as people hate I-tunes U2, it got Vertigo out there, got peoples' attention and told them U2 had a new album coming out. I personally would have gone with NLOTH 2 or Magnificent as the first single, but Boots is the kind of song that could have been big if it had been promoted properly.

We can argue all day over whether this new age of the huge lead single and the technology gadget promotion is good or bad, but what we can not argue is that it is REALITY. That being said, U2 needs to adapt to these times and come up with innovative, forward thinking ways to promote material they release through the mediums used in the industry today. Otherwise, they will not have huge commercial success again. I think this is more the issue than whether the tunes are "radio-friendly" or not. Lets face it, no one would have called WOWY or Still Haven't Found radio friendly in 1987.

Any ideas on how U2 should go about releasing and promoting SOA in general or Every Breaking Wave in particular? Blackberry App early release and commercial? Let it leak out? Fan club members get it first? Download it from RED campaign?? Other possibilities.

digitize

As others have said before, I do not think it's impossible to have a hit single or two on an album without compromising artistic integrity. U2 have generally done this well over their career... they have some great catchy singles that get into great albums with much more depth without making the singles themselves mediocre or anti-artistic. NYD, Pride, WOWY, The Fly/Mysterious Ways/One, Magnificent, and even BD and Cobble are all good examples of this, IMO, even though the last one didn't have much of an album to support.

The problem with Boots is that some of the fan base thought that they were making Vertigo 2.0, and rejected the single because of that, and some thought they were making Discothèque 2.0 or The Fly 2.0, and rejected it because of that. I love the song, considering that it actually has a strong lyrical position in the album, upholding the 'peripheral vision' theme of the album with ironic close-surroundings-centrism. I also love the Eno-tastic layered-ness of the production. But not a lot of people saw the single the way I saw it, so it kind of failed.

financeguy

Indeed. Plus, given recent album timelines, U2 will be in their mid 50s before the next one (discounting Songs of Wonder or whatever it's called)

I couldn't think of anything more pathetic than a bunch of fiftysomethings trying to write chart friendly pop hits. They weren't even very good at that in the 20s and 30s. Was With or Without You a chart friendly pop song? Hardly, it was completely different to most of what was in the charts in 1987, and yet did well in the singles charts precisely because of that.

financeguy

Maybe, but someone who owns two U2 albums is not a U2 'fan', they're just someone that owns a few U2 albums. No-one would claim to be a Bowie fan on the basis of owning two of his 1980s albums.

Neil Young still caters to his fanbase, sells out decent sized venues and releases new albums that do reasonably well, and probably even picks up new fans who have an interest in real music. Reason being he is not interested in compromising on his musical integrity and even if he was, rightly releases that it would be an utterly pointless exercise.

Granted, U2 will not be able to mount huge scale tours in the future if they lose the pop fans, but that's life.