Some people are not going to make friends in high places… Bombay Bicycle Club guitarist Jamie MacColl has shared with NME his opinion about the recent U2 album delivered for free on iTunes: ‘I thought the move was quite invasive. A lot of people are up in arms because they don’t like U2. I don’t have an opinion on the band itself, but I do think the method is a little bit in your face.’… ‘‘When you sign up to use an Apple product, you’re giving them your information, so this album is part and parcel of that. But that still doesn’t mean they need to use that information in such an invasive way.’
Honestly, I have never heard of a free album which has triggered more controversy,… why is that? Is it because it is U2?
Just search ‘Who tf is U2’ on Twitter and you’ll have a field day, are there so many people who don’t know (or pretend they don’t know) who U2 is?
I was myself surprised to see the new album in my iTunes before I had done anything, but I didn’t make any big fuzz about it,… I didn’t even take the time to actually download the album, and that says a lot about how interested by U2 I am. I streamed a song or two, but wasn’t really convinced it was worth 2 seconds of my time for clicking on download, … Bono has a voice that tends to irritate me these days.
But back to this takeover by Apple-U2, I thought at the time the band was forcing its way into my library, but I shrugged and almost forgot about it, until I read this hilarious article ‘How to dismantle an Apple-Bono bomb: here’s how to get U2 out of your iTunes library’.
Was that a way for U2 to reach as many people as possible at once? Was that a way to tell us, you Apple fans, you HAVE to like U2, right? I found this quote on Reddit, and it sums up my thought: ‘Man this band is so boring. Every song sounds the same. It kind of feels like if apple could build the perfect customer he would listen to U2 and Coldplay, live at Starbucks and eats sushi every day.’
But you have to admit that this was a 36o degrees U-turn, not long ago Bono was speaking against file sharing, and now he is giving away his album to millions. It may be because they have lost any edge, it may be because the young people on Twitter don’t even know who U2 is. After all, Bono has declared at the beginning of this year ‘We’re on the verge of irrelevance’ and these days, U2’s sole relevancy is complaints on Twitter after the band has forced its way into everyone’s iTunes library.
