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  1. I really like 75% of this album, but why did they make it?

    U2 had had a rebirth of popularity at the beginning of the 2000s after their POP experience.

    Beautiful Day is a cracking pop/rock tune and Vertigo is a masterful - if not simplistic - rock track, and theses 2 songs definitely hit a chord with the public and not just U2 fans.

    They also had an emotional series of post 9/11 concerts and a Super Bowl performance to be proud of, which brought them a whole new legion of fans - as well as later Vertigo seemingly being played ad infinitum.

    The guys had been kicked in the nuts after POP - even though it's a masterpiece - so why risk it all again releasing NLOTH when they were riding the crest of the popular/relevant wave that they had been seeking?

    There was no need to try and be experimental again especially after gaining new fans, a new popular era for the band and sold-out tours too.

    Suffice to say that the album wasn't as commercially successful as they'd hoped - even though the tour was - and this is reflected with many of the NLOTH album tracks being removed from the setlists (I think they went down to as low as only performing 4 tracks from the touring album!).

    It seemed that POP had happened to them all over again.

    And now over the last few tours it seems that the album is getting the POP treatment regarding setlist appearances.

    We know the band do not like to take risks post POP and I applaud them for releasing NLOTH but were they delusional?
  3. PS. I dare you to write a full length post about anything U2-related without mentioning Pop.
  4. Why a new thread?

    No Line On The Horizon 10 years on.

    Yeh but mine is asking why and not just a revisit.

    PS. I dare you to write a full length post about anything U2-related without mentioning Pop.

    Oh that's impossible...


    ...just like a POP remaster (oops!).
  5. I believe they initially set out to make a follow up like you described, working with Rick Rubin in 2006. Something happened, or didn’t happen, during those Rubin sessions. Perhaps they just got bored with making generic U2 by numbers songs? Maybe they knew that if they made another album like ATYCLB and HTDAAB that it would’ve been one too many, and would’ve flopped?

    NLOTH is almost like another Passengers album, to me. Or at least it started that way, until they realized they needed HITZ.
  6. I too love 75% of that album. I think GOYB and SUC are among U2’s worst songs. Somehow the material they were working on splinter into NLOTH and SOA. NLOTH was supposed to be the more commercially appealing of the 2, like Achtung Baby to Zooropa. Except it all went belly up when NLOTH turned out to be a dud, and the last thing they wanted to do was release an even less accessible follow up album.

    I’d like to hear U2 be interviewed about this time in the band. Throw in Bono’s surgery and the Spider-Man musical, and I’ll be Things we’re not so pleasant at the time.
  7. Boredom probably, they dominated the mid to late 80s the 90s and the first half of the 00s they knew they could take a risk with No line as the last 2 albums and tours were a huge success also they wanted to allow Eno/Lanois a bigger part in the song writing process which wasn't such a good idea
  8. Originally posted by podiumboy:I too love 75% of that album. I think GOYB and SUC are among U2’s worst songs. Somehow the material they were working on splinter into NLOTH and SOA. NLOTH was supposed to be the more commercially appealing of the 2, like Achtung Baby to Zooropa. Except it all went belly up when NLOTH turned out to be a dud, and the last thing they wanted to do was release an even less accessible follow up album.

    I’d like to hear U2 be interviewed about this time in the band. Throw in Bono’s surgery and the Spider-Man musical, and I’ll be Things we’re not so pleasant at the time.
    Hey now, GOYB is one of the best songs they've done since Pop (in my humble opinion of course).

    But I think that your rationale makes sense. U2 were definitely toying with the idea of 2 releases, one likely to be more marketable than the other. That idea probably faded as songs from NLOTH dropped for the 360 tour's setlist.

    I feel like I once read something about a double album release at one point. Weren't the two releases going to be called something along the lines of Dawn and Dusk at one point?
  9. This thread should be about songs of innocence and then experience by association.

    If you're going to force an album to be downloaded onto every ios product in the world, why use an album that has no meaning to anyone but u2 and the people who know their history? None of those songs resonate with the public because of it. They should have forced a real album on people.
  10. I wonder if GOYB (sorry thefly108) was the precursor to what was to come.

    The single wasn't well received and even long-term U2 fans felt it was harking back to a Vertigo 2 vibe when all they'd heard was this experimental talk from the band.

    The video was a mess and the song was over-played as the band flogged it to death on every tv show they did.

    Then when listening to the album you got mixed messages as to whether it was experimental album or a pop album (no, not that masterpiece).

    GOYB, SUC and IGCTIICGCT were the nadir of that album and were obviously ill-fitting.

    But if we talk about the experimentalism and the 'risk' the band was taking when there was no need to then it gets even more confusing - I think the most confusing part of U2's history EVER! and possibly the most confusing U2 album ever too.

    What makes it all even more interesting is that the tour was a massive success, but I guess the previous 10 years had something to do with that and that massive monstrosity the 'claw', of course.

    I'm with podiumboy as I'd like to hear more from the band about this - as well as your opinions.
  11. Originally posted by dylbagz:This thread should be about songs of innocence and then experience by association.

    If you're going to force an album to be downloaded onto every ios product in the world, why use an album that has no meaning to anyone but u2 and the people who know their history? None of those songs resonate with the public because of it. They should have forced a real album on people.
    Even if we're off topic: this is a very valid point, hadn't though of it that way. They should have chosen a less personal and more wide-scope album to force it down 500-million's throats. It would have been better received I guess (or at least, less bashed).
  12. Why did they make NLOTH is an easy question, with a very simple answer - they needed to record another studio album after HTDAAB. The tougher question, and the one I think you're really asking, is how did it turn out the way it did?

    I suspect I could ramble on for a whole page but, when I distill it down, my conclusion is the album is what it is due a loss of focus and poor decisions over the 5 years it took to release it.