Quote:
Originally Posted by FuzzyPlum
In the 80's U2 were a huge band but they were also regarded as a great one. It was at the point of the Zoo TV tour that their ego's led them to start disappearing up their bottoms. Unfortunately I think that's when they started to lose it musically. In the early-mid 90's they were definitely the biggest act in the World (though I remember REM being up there at one stage).
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I don't know about that. I always thought they were another INX in the 1980s. They had some good singles but I don't remember them as being in the same vein as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen in terms of popularity.
Then again, I only purchased one album. It had Sunday Bloody Sunday on it. There was a bunch hype about the album. I listened to the album and liked a few songs, but I didn't think it was a great album. In my mind, they were an overhyped band. I never purchased another album.
I really started to hear how great they were in the 1990s, not really the 80s. That was when I noticed their star was in the stratosphere, but BONO's politics turned me against the bland. I don't like bands or soloists who are full of political self-importance.
I will say this. I love Ordinary Love. I forget how i first heard it, but I never even knew it was U2. That won me over and I plan to explore their music.
However, the Apple Download event was a catastrophe and they lost a bunch of music insiders as fans.
"U2's decision to allow free downloads of Songs of Innocence was questioned by musicians, including The Black Keys' Patrick Carney and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.[67][68] Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson believed it devalued music, saying U2 had "sent a message to everyone that music is free, and that's disturbing. It's easy to do that when you're a multi-millionaire-billionaire and money isn't really something that you worry about, but when you're a working rock 'n' roll band and you count on every dollar, it's disappointing to see someone do that."[69] The Entertainment Retailers Association reported that UK sales of the band's back catalogue were minimal in the week following the album's release; the organisation's chairman Paul Quirk said: "This vindicates our view that giving away hundreds of millions of albums simply devalues music and runs the risk of alienating the 60% of the population who are not customers of iTunes ... Giving away music like this is as damaging to the value of music as piracy."[70]
Many iTunes customers were unhappy that the album was added to their music libraries without their consent;[71][72][73] for users with automatic music downloads enabled in iTunes, Songs of Innocence downloaded automatically.[74][75] Chris Richards of The Washington Post called the release "rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail".[76] Slate said that it was "extremely unsettling" that "consent and interest are no longer a requisite for owning an album, only corporate prerogative".[77] Vijith Assar of Wired said: "The delivery mechanism amounts to nothing more than spam with forced downloads."[78] In response to the criticism, Apple established a dedicated website to allow users to delete the album from their iTunes accounts.[79] Although Bono apologized to a fan during a Facebook Q&A session for the album's addition to their music library,[80] he refused to offer a public apology, saying, "It's one of the proudest moments in U2's history."[34]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2#Influences