Press and journalist reviews

Originally posted by ahn1991:A lot of people are seem to be reviewing U2's method of release from the wrong perspective. They see U2's free release as a sign that they are not confident that people are willing to purchase the album, but if you think about it, U2 is making the smart call based on statistics and current trends.

If you ask teenagers and young adults, the largest market demographic out there, how much music they have actually paid for, you'll get a lot of shifty eyes and people responding "just enough." The fact of the matter is that college age people are just not buying music and the internet is helping out with that. In my undergrad, I presented a persuasive speech advocating that free distribution of music helps out artists in the end by opening their product to those who view money as a barrier. In this economy, that's just about everyone. Even though people are calling U2's free release as the end of the music industry as we know it, the rising prominence of free music streaming services such as spotify signaled the end of the old industry a long time ago. Ironically, when U2 released their album for free, they beat all the people who were hoping to leak the album.

U2 is smart. They have been musically relevant for the past 30 years because they are smart and understand how the industry changes. Artists and reviewers who don't see that will just get left behind.

Originally posted by BelgianBono:[..]

Agreed. Personally, I have my doubts about the way they've released it. BUT I do know U2 is a machine that's got a LOT of experience in the business and knows how to participate in the new waves of the music industry. So, time will tell if they're right, but they probably are... The people behind them are usually visionaires and I'm totally not so...

Originally posted by ahn1991:[..]

There are several statistics that show a drastic shift in the music industry, mainly where the money is. At the turn of the century, most artists made their money from physical album sales. Digital purchasing of music wasn't a thing and touring at the time was incredibly costly because most artists weren't touring for long enough stretches to bring in a profit.

Now (at least as of 3 years ago), most big artists, U2 included, make only about 20% of their profit from album sales. These numbers include digital purchases, which have boomed over the past decade. The industry is scrambling because people are just not buying music anymore. With YouTube, Spotify, and file hosting websites, the incentive to buy music is rapidly disappearing. The rise of smartphone technology and the spread of publicly available WiFi is exacerbating the problem because free streaming services that used to be tied to a hard internet connection can now be accessed practically everywhere.

Most artists have been suffering from this trend, but U2 is actually one of the few bands still upping their profit margins. The reason U2 has such an edge (pun intended) over the rest of the pack is their immense touring experience. I'm not just talking about U2 as a band, I'm talking about U2 as an organization. With extensive touring experience spanning over 30 years, U2 is probably the most knowledgeable organization when it comes to making a tour work. Look at Coldplay as an example. Fans and critics alike will agree that their Mylo Xyloto Tour was the biggest thing happening in live music for its duration, but they had stop abruptly, leaving rumors that the tour was actually bankrupting the band.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you want to survive as a musician in this day and age, you have to know how to make touring work because pumping out albums and hoping for that radio hit just won't cut it anymore.

Originally posted by BelgianBono:[..]

But can you pull off a major tour with no new work ? Or work that doesn't reach the masses ? Maybe once, and because you're already famous, but not forever. You'll still have to offer something on these shows...

By now, U2 ought to be the most jaded people on the planet. They’re rock’s king billionaires. They have seen everything. They could buy a small country and set themselves up as its despots for life. They have a business empire that spans the globe. There was a time when Bono, the Edge, Adam and Larry could have totally sold out, had any woman and any drug and any thing on earth that they wanted. Two of them did chose new names for themselves in the beginning, silly little rock names that have stuck for a lifetime now.

It turns out that they didn’t get cynical and they’re not jaded, at least if Songs of Innocence is what we have to go by. I finally listened to the entire album at one pull on the way to a gun show over the weekend (hey, I do live in Texas). This album is freaking great, one of the greatest the band has ever produced. There isn’t a bad song on it. I won’t say that it’s Achtung Baby revisited, but it’s very very good.

U2 have mostly gone back to the stripped-down energetic sound of their origins. There are songs on here that would fit with the angry young U2 that shook the world from Dublin as New Wave was tearing through the music scene. There are songs and chords and distortion and lyrics on here that fit with their Berlin phase and later on. And at the same time, they sound like grown-ups who have lost some precious things, and found others along the way.

The quartet aren’t full of themselves either, at least, no more full of themselves than any rock stars are, and a whole lot less than those Apple fanboys who raged at the free album and still will wait days in line for the next wonderwork from Cuppertino that will play catch-up to whatever Samsung has been doing for a year ahead of them.

The final verse of SoI‘s lead tune, “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone),” has Bono putting himself in his own place:

I woke up at the moment when the miracle had come
I get so many things I don’t deserve
All the stolen voices will some day be returned
The most beautiful sound I ever heard

In the age of the humblebrag, what famous person ever says that they have anything that they don’t deserve?

This is the same man who sang, a decade or two ago, that “every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, they all kill their inspiration and sing about their grief.” This is the same man who observed that “If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.” The same belief in those old lyrics keeps showing up in the new ones. Bono doesn’t get lazy and buy ghostwriters.

There’s a word to describe that line from rock royalty about “getting so many things that I don’t deserve” that has become so unfamiliar today, that it has been all but dropped from the English language in favor of fads like “sideboob.”

That word is “humility.” Another is “grace.” We moderns have mostly rejected both.

And we rage when someone gives us something of value for free, requiring no effort on our part to receive it.

It’s hardly the first time humans have done that. And it’s hardly the first time we have raged about it.

The tale of grace and rejection isn’t lost on U2; they address it in “Cedarwood Road.”

If the door is open it isn’t theft
You can’t return to where you’ve never left
Blossoms falling from a tree they cover you and cover me
Symbols clashing, bibles smashing
Paint the world you need to see
Sometimes fear is the only place that we can call our home

Pulled away from the Apple hype and the biggest band in the world noise, U2 are still capable of being the most interesting and surprising band in the world, even if some people hate them now because it’s fashionable and there’s always some new popular backlash to chase and post about on Twitter and Facebook. For all that they’ve seen and heard and done and failed at, U2 are still four Irish lads who have come through it all with something that few in this world ever really have.

It’s not their pile of money, or their fame, or their ridiculous influence on all of rock that trails in their wake. It’s not their Super Bowl show or their status atop the rock heap. It’s something that you can’t buy.

Songs of Innocence brings evidence that Paul Hewson and his mates have discovered something simpler, deeper, and greater, at this stage of their lives. That thing is joy.

Songs of Innocence is infused with it, and something else too. The terrified Boy from 1980 who had lost his mom, has found a measure of peace.

Leave it to the clever folks at Apple. Soon after deleting U2's new album Songs of Innocence from my Apple iTunes account, I began hearing Bono's familiar caterwauling in my brain.

I'm not sure how Apple accomplished this technological feat but it is quite impressive. I'm just worried about any possible brain damage from continuously hearing the seminal rock band's latest album while eating my breakfast, taking a shower, conducting business or trying to sleep.

In a unique marketing campaign, Apple teamed up with U2 to automatically download the album for free to 500 million iCloud accounts in 119 countries across the world this month. The album was scheduled to coincide with the launch of the iPhone 6 and iWatch. The giveaway backfired, however, with numerous user complaints about having the U2 album synced to their devices without their permission.

I was one of the many iTunes users who sought to remove the free U2 album. After repeated attempts, I was finally successful by following a number of Google links that sprung up with tutorials on "How to Delete/Remove U2's Songs of Innocence." Or, at least, I thought so.

But then I began hearing what sounded like the album's opening bouncy track "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" in my sleep. At first, I thought it was the clock radio. When I realized it wasn't on, I checked to see if perhaps I'd left the TV on in the other room. It wasn't. Was it coming from my neighbor's house? No such luck. It seemed much closer.

Like a bad dream, I soon discovered that the entire U2 album was following me from room to room like Muzak in a department store. Only it was in my head! Truth be told, I kind of enjoyed the song "California (There is No End to Love)," but the rest of the album I found pretty meh.

After a sleepless night with U2 songs ringing in my ears, not knowing what to do, I contacted Apple customer service. But when I mentioned the phenomenon, they were not helpful, instead directing me to their website. I asked if there was an application or site where I could remove or delete the album from my brain. The woman laughed.

So here I am, stuck listening to U2 songs like "The Troubles," "Volcano," "Cedarwood Road," "Every Breaking Wave," "Song for Someone" and "Iris," wondering if I'll ever get U2 out of my head.

Apple, if you're reading this, can you please help? Or, at the very least, change the frequency to Radiohead?

Originally posted by Ali709:The trend of hate and bad reviews based on the method of release is changing - as it always does with the so called internet phenomena. New reviews and posts I see of people criticising the haters.

One nice review I saw today - it's 2 pages, I won't paste it all here:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/09/23/after-all-the-rage-and-screaming-is-u2s-songs-of-innocence-any-good/

Here's the conclusion:

[..]