The Irishmen bypassed any potential fear of missing out, by making it almost impossible for anyone to avoid their new album. The backlash was inevitable, but the trouble ultimately lies in U2's struggle to understand the fundamental premise behind the guerrilla release. Unsurprisingly, fans of all stripes do not like having music foisted upon them - it plays to our collective worst fears about the powers of the digital giants and our own vulnerability in the internet age - even if the intrusion comes in the form of a "gift". The insidious stench of collusion and direct marketing has already dogged the album's launch. Worse still, this corporate collaboration saw Songs Of Innocence implanted in the libraries of any and every registered iTunes customer, without their consent. Running to their friends at Apple (ensuring a massive payday in the process) they released Songs Of Innocence without prior warning, but eschewed the thrill (and inherent risk) of slipping the record out in silence, by playing at Apple's latest product launch. U2 appear to have got the wrong end of the stick. The shock, the novelty of the moment, the media void that a million and one Twitter voices and Tumblr blogs rushed to fill created a tangible happening. The quality of both albums ultimately ensured triumph, but it was what the marketing big wigs describe as FOMO (fear of missing out) that appeared to create a bigger buzz than the most expensive marketing campaigns. The former relied on mystery and distance to whip the public into a frenzy, while the latter offered a new musical-video experience while simultaneously side stepping her usual ferocious PR machine to catch the world off guard. Bowie and Beyonce mastered the art: dropping their hotly anticipated comeback records completely out of the blue. The event (or non-event to be precise) album has proved the one sure fire way of galvanising the public at large. In response to this ever changing climate (and with the relative failure of 2009's No Line On The Horizon), U2 find themselves in the unenviable position of needing a weather man to tell them which way the wind blows. In an age of self-sufficient niches and eclecticism, superstardom is measured by media presence and brand strength, rather than hit records. Measuring accomplishment by chart positions feels archaic, while slumping sales may be used to beat an old band in decline, no one bats an eyelid when a new album hits No.1, because, quite frankly, its easier to achieve than ever before.
The monoculture, the mainstream, whatever you may choose to term it, is simply the largest minority no longer holding the cultural capital it once did. The problem for U2 in the 21st century is that bigness, particularly bigness for rock bands, is an illusion.
U2 SONGS OF INNOCENCE HOW TO
All That You Can't Leave Behind with its lead single "Beautiful Day" and the "Vertigo" fronted How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb topped charts across the world: Bono was a man of his word. To their immense credit, the aging rockers actually pulled it off. Bono made his intentions clear at the 2001 Grammys, U2 were going to reclaim the title of biggest band in the universe, by hook or by crook. After the floundering experimentation of the 1990s, typified by the divisive (to say the least) Pop album and tour, the Irish rockers found a sense of purpose and renewal in the new millennium by setting their sights on world domination once more.