Did U2 kick off "The Age Of Grievance"?
Releasing "Songs Of Innocence" on ITunes ended up a disaster.
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of a musical moment that sadly, lives in infamy. There may not have been a better indication of where we were headed as a world when, on September 9, 2014, the great Irish band U2 had a bold idea.
Since it had been five years between albums, U2 lead singer and songwriter Paul “Bono” Hewson had what he thought was a crackerjack idea. Since U2 was working with ITunes already and Apple was about to release the IPhone 6, somebody from the band – my money’s on Bono – came up with the idea of giving away their new album, what now seems the ironically titled “Songs Of Innocence.” They made the digital release available to 500 million ITunes’ users on September 9, a full month before the actual physical release on October 13.
Yup, Apple and U2 decided to include it – for free – on their “purchased” section of their ITunes Music Library for millions of ITunes users. Like me.
In his memoir “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story” Bono explains where the idea came from. The band’s new manager Guy Oseary was excited about digital technology and as Bono explains it, “he believed artists could surf this technological wave and speak directly with our audiences. That was the plan for the release of “Songs Of Innocence.”
As Guy O argued to Bono: “Why make fewer CD’s for people buying fewer CD players when you could go straight to everyone who has ever bought a U2 album and deliver the new one digitally?”
Apple CEO Tim Cook is stunned when this comes up.
“Are you talking about free music? You want to give this music away free? But the whole point of what we’re trying to do at Apple is to NOT give away music free. The point is to make sure musicians get paid,” he says.
“No,” Bono replies, “I don’t think we give it away free. I think you pay us for it and then you give it away free, as a gift to people. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
“And this is just to people who like U2?” Cook asks.
“I think we should give it away to everybody,” Bono says. “I mean, it’s their choice whether they want to listen to it.”
That’s how it was intended. How it worked out, was different. As Bono put it: “We were Santa Claus and we’d knocked a few bricks out as we went down the chimney with our bag of songs.”
Instead of saying ‘Thanks, guys’ or even politely deleting it or ignoring it, people went and bitched about it. Chris Richards, a fun guy, wrote in the Washington Post that the release was “rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail.” Somebody from Slate wrote that they found it “extremely unsettling that content and interest are no longer a requisite for owning an album, only corporate prerogative.”
I mean, GET A LIFE, people! Did “The Age Of Grievance” begin there? You shudder to think so.
Later, Bono offered an apology for his act of kindness. “I take full responsibility…I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out towards it. Not quite.”
Think about that for a moment. These four guys, who’ve been together since high school, seen unimaginable, indescribable musical heights, want to keep recording, still have something to say, something to share. They’re working hard, have good intentions to deliver but life interferes. Bono has a bike accident, has emergency surgery and there are all sorts of other commitments that make clearing time to focus on the new record difficult. The band tries several different producers and generally have a tough time putting the record together, probably more difficult than any previous record.
Finally, the album is finished to their satisfaction, they look up at the calendar and realize damn, five years has elapsed since their last record release. As Bono explains to Q Magazine in November of 2014, “Rumor has it we haven’t made a U2 album the last five years. We have. We’ve made several. We just didn’t release them because we were waiting for something that would be as good as the best we’ve ever done.”
While few U2 fans would rate “Songs Of Innocence” ahead of “Achtung Baby” or “The Joshua Tree” or “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” or even “Zooropa” at this point of their career – and certainly, they KNOW that – but that they still set their sights high, that they AIM to surpass those iconic earlier releases, well, isn’t that what you would want and what you would expect from a band like U2? And did anybody really think at that point they could outdo what they’d already done?
So, given all that went on, understanding their stubborn idealism – and good for them – the band decides to do something THEY think the fans will be excited about, an unofficial but heartfelt “Thanks” for sticking with us by handing them their past five years worth of work – for free.
It was magically shipped to their phone, since they couldn’t reach their individual hearts – though Bono would try, you think, if he could. And there’s a backlash. A backlash! Instead of a gift, the record was treated as an intrusion, Bono sticking his electronic foot into your living room, blocking out the TV – “Hi folks! Howdoyalikemynewrecord.”
That wasn’t all of it. Though the band was compensated for the record – not that they needed the money – the band also decided to permit free downloads of the songs from “Songs Of Innocence,” hoping that their new music might connect with fans, who’d been waiting all that time. That, too, set off a firestorm.
Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson said U2 “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 in a working rock’n’roll band and you count on every dollar, it’s disappointing to see someone do that.”
So, if they did charge their fans for the record, you’d be happier, the world would be a better place? You want to make more money, Keith Nelson, write better songs.
In theory, of course, the idea of democracy, many voices into one, is what our country was founded on. What we never talk about, possibly because it’s too frustrating, is that if everybody has a voice, somebody has to listen to it. And also that someone is likely to be bitching about something.
So here we are, a decade later. The band just played a thrilling series of shows at The Sphere - I got to go in December!. To me, I’m grateful that someone with all the money and say-so of a Bono would be thoughtful and generous enough to simply say to all of us who love - and are inspired by their music - here you go, enjoy what we’ve been working on for the last five years. We hope you like it.
And thanks for listening. Imagine that. A band saying “Thanks.”