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  2. Agree, NLOTH is not even close to being a masterpiece.

    Albums that are closest to being their 3rd 'masterpiece':

    POP.

    SoI.

    UF.

    Zooropa.

    NLOTH, sits amongst their worst albums:

    R&H, NLOTH, HTDAAB, October.
  3. Originally posted by popmarter:[..]
    Sure a lot of casual U2 fans wouldn't know anything past Achtung baby same goes for a lot of bands of their vintage, AC⚡DC ,Depeche Mode,Def Leppard, The Cure etc they have their golden era where they released their big albums which a lot of fans know but try asking a casual fan what they released post 2000 and you will be met with silence.
    Yeah sure but I didn't speak to many casuals, I'm talking about actual fans. I organized part of the queue and put numbers on the wrists of around 500 fans (between numbers 400 and 850 of the queue iirc). You'd guess if someone is willing to sleep outside a stadium and stand in the extreme July heat for 12 hours, they would at least know the name of the album the band were promoting, right?
  4. Originally posted by iTim:Having a tour that isn’t named after anything remotely linked the the album helps. You weren’t going to see the promotion of NLOTH you were going to see the spectacle of 360.
    Sure, I agree, but U2 have become the masters of that. They're not really promoting an album as the tour becomes a completely separate entity. But I don't think that discounts the fact that they became disillusioned or even dissatisfied with work from the album they just released. Their album tours have become masks for commercial disappointment, something they probably learned from PopMart. The spectacle sweeps subpar chart and album performance under the rug. But when they start to strip out a lot of the work early on while not actually drawing attention to almost half the album in the first place, there's actually more to it. The masters of disguise, I say.
  5. Originally posted by LikeASong:[..]
    Yeah sure but I didn't speak to many casuals, I'm talking about actual fans. I organized part of the queue and put numbers on the wrists of around 500 fans (between numbers 400 and 850 of the queue iirc). You'd guess if someone is willing to sleep outside a stadium and stand in the extreme July heat for 12 hours, they would at least know the name of the album the band were promoting, right?
    That’s crazy, I don’t understand that at all. I can get people not liking certain songs or albums even but they must not even be giving new material a chance if they don’t know the name of it. For the early shows on the tour 7 songs to not be too well aware of is a lot, and that’s assuming they know all the older material. If they don’t even know the name of the latest album are they going to be aware of anything other than the singles and live classics?
  6. Originally posted by LikeASong:[..]
    Yeah sure but I didn't speak to many casuals, I'm talking about actual fans. I organized part of the queue and put numbers on the wrists of around 500 fans (between numbers 400 and 850 of the queue iirc). You'd guess if someone is willing to sleep outside a stadium and stand in the extreme July heat for 12 hours, they would at least know the name of the album the band were promoting, right?
    So you went around asking hundreds of them did they know about the new album????You must have been exhausted again the point still stands most bands from U2's era suffer the same fate some of them don't even bother recording new music as they know fans wanna hear the old classics and aren't bothered about hearing anything new.
  7. Originally posted by popmarter:[..]
    So you went around asking hundreds of them did they know about the new album????You must have been exhausted again the point still stands most bands from U2's era suffer the same fate some of them don't even bother recording new music as they know fans wanna hear the old classics and aren't bothered about hearing anything new.
    If you’re organising the queue and writing numbers on people’s hands it’s perfectly reasonable to ask them what they think of the new album while making conversation, no? I don’t think he went down to Camp Nou and conducted a survey with a clipboard.
  8. shit i forgot that stand up comedy was on NLOH - i take back everything i wrote
  9. Originally posted by iTim:[..]
    If you’re organising the queue and writing numbers on people’s hands it’s perfectly reasonable to ask them what they think of the new album while making conversation, no? I don’t think he went down to Camp Nou and conducted a survey with a clipboard.
    I'm a weirdo but not THAT MUCH of a weirdo, lol.
  10. Originally posted by popmarter:[..]
    So you went around asking hundreds of them did they know about the new album????You must have been exhausted again the point still stands most bands from U2's era suffer the same fate some of them don't even bother recording new music as they know fans wanna hear the old classics and aren't bothered about hearing anything new.
    You are right and that's exactly what made (and still makes) me angry about the Joshua Tree Tour(s): U2 had always been in the opposite field. Even having produced masterpieces with huge commercial success like Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, they always kept writing and promoting new albums, they never relied on past success to sell their tours out.
  11. People have bashed them a bit in this thread but Cedars of Lebanon and Fez are up there with the stuff on JT, AB, and Pop for me.

    Fez is Zooropa 2 (not in a reductive way, in a bombastic, full of wonder, fantastic opener (it shouldve been) way), and Cedars is Bono writing from a completely different planet, and that song musically is just straight haunting to me. It succeeds at that thing U2 were dabbling in with JT, trying to make “cinematic music” - it really brings you somewhere. It’s a - as the kids say - BIG mood.
  12. Originally posted by RattleandHum1988:People have bashed them a bit in this thread but Cedars of Lebanon and Fez are up there with the stuff on JT, AB, and Pop for me.

    Fez is Zooropa 2 (not in a reductive way, in a bombastic, full of wonder, fantastic opener (it shouldve been) way), and Cedars is Bono writing from a completely different planet, and that song musically is just straight haunting to me. It succeeds at that thing U2 were dabbling in with JT, trying to make “cinematic music” - it really brings you somewhere. It’s a - as the kids say - BIG mood.
    All of this. Especially Cedars. Some of Bono’s best writing in years.