First of all, let me state that I'm actually finding U2's new album No Line On The Horizon to be quite D'luvvly. Granted, I didn't pay for it. I traded a bunch of stuff I didn't buy in at Amoeba Records and got it basically for free.I haven't liked an album of U2's since Zooropa—the title song of which I consider their hands-down best song ever. The Achtung Baby/Zooropa/ "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" period was the band's best, in my highly-opinionated mind.
Anyway, here's some of the witty write-up New York magazine's Vulture blog did, called "Why Is No One Buying The New U2 Album?":
"U2's boring new album, No Line on the Horizon, is on track to sell around 450,000 album this week—not bad considering that no one was buying CDs even before the economic apocalypse. But this is the Last of the Megabands™! U2's last album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, sold 840,000 in its first week of release—so what went wrong this time? It's certainly not for a lack of annoying promotion!All this aside, I'm listening to "Electrical Storm" right now, U2's hands-down second best song ever. Below, clips for "Zooropa" and "Electrical Storm":
Of course piracy is a factor, but it was also a factor in 2005 when Bomb leaked way in advance of its official release. Digital Music News speculates that Horizon's slumping sales are the fault of "Get on Your Boots," the album's earsore of a first single, which is failing to generate interest on radio, iTunes, and even file-sharing networks, hilariously. And it's true that it's an awful, awful song—but is it really bad enough to put off even the fans who've stuck with U2 all these years?
...In any case, if actual sales are as bad or worse than projections, then the joke's on us, since the Biggest Band in the World will either be Coldplay or the Jonas Brothers, and that just reflects poorly on everybody."