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Bono is certainly right about Boots needing to be worked out live and Unknown Caller being a classic

Bono also defended the sales performance of the band's 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon. "We're just about to come to five million sales on No Line on The Horizon, and that, these days, is the equivalent of selling 12 million records," he says. "You can actually do the figures on that. So when you look at it like that, it has the same sales as All That You Can't Leave Behind.

"That's despite the fact that No Line doesn't have A Beautiful Day and doesn't have a Stuck in A Moment. There's no pop song on No Line, but it's still sold that amount. It's been an amazing success for an album which is quite a complex piece of work and doesn't have one single pop song on it."

5 million = 12 million?

Wow, even if I agree that the music industry has changed, and sales figures are not to be equivalent to the 80s or 90s, I think that's exaggerating abit, Mr. Hewson.

Oh, and there's at least two pop songs in NLOTH: Crazy Tonight and Boots. And well, Magnificent and Stand Up Comedy are strong contenders to that title too, they aimed to be pop songs but ended up being crappy songs

Mr_Trek

13 years

Originally posted by LikeASongBono also defended the sales performance of the band's 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon. "We're just about to come to five million sales on No Line on The Horizon, and that, these days, is the equivalent of selling 12 million records," he says. "You can actually do the figures on that. So when you look at it like that, it has the same sales as All That You Can't Leave Behind.

"That's despite the fact that No Line doesn't have A Beautiful Day and doesn't have a Stuck in A Moment. There's no pop song on No Line, but it's still sold that amount. It's been an amazing success for an album which is quite a complex piece of work and doesn't have one single pop song on it."

5 million = 12 million?

Wow, even if I agree that the music industry has changed, and sales figures are not to be equivalent to the 80s or 90s, I think that's exaggerating abit, Mr. Hewson.

Oh, and there's at least two pop songs in NLOTH: Crazy Tonight and Boots. And well, Magnificent and Stand Up Comedy are strong contenders to that title too, they aimed to be pop songs but ended up being crappy songs

STFU. Boots is awesome, Crazy is awesome, Magnificent is sometimes awesome and once upon a time Stand Up Comedy was my favorite song.

JuJuman

13 years

Originally posted by LikeASongBono also defended the sales performance of the band's 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon. "We're just about to come to five million sales on No Line on The Horizon, and that, these days, is the equivalent of selling 12 million records," he says. "You can actually do the figures on that. So when you look at it like that, it has the same sales as All That You Can't Leave Behind.

"That's despite the fact that No Line doesn't have A Beautiful Day and doesn't have a Stuck in A Moment. There's no pop song on No Line, but it's still sold that amount. It's been an amazing success for an album which is quite a complex piece of work and doesn't have one single pop song on it."

5 million = 12 million?

Wow, even if I agree that the music industry has changed, and sales figures are not to be equivalent to the 80s or 90s, I think that's exaggerating abit, Mr. Hewson.

Oh, and there's at least two pop songs in NLOTH: Crazy Tonight and Boots. And well, Magnificent and Stand Up Comedy are strong contenders to that title too, they aimed to be pop songs but ended up being crappy songs

Yep yep. Perhaps there's no 'really successful' pop song on the album...

NumberFiveAlive

13 years

I think this 'caring too much' is not a good sign... they should let it go like when they did Zooropa during tour just for fun and it turned out to be their best album. Screw relevance, small music in small places and sales, they will have mass money from AB "remaster" anyway. Just experiment and in the end believe in your work. No Line is great, better than the 2 albums before it, but the idea wasn't finished (and it had bad support - wrong singles selection, not enough songs played live).

Mr_Trek

13 years

Well, last time they changed because of relevance they had massive success with ATYCLB, the time before that they changed because of relevance was when they made the best album of all time, Achtung Baby.

I won't tell U2 where to go.

eviltwin

13 years

I know it's all trivial and not really indicative of much but I like looking at statistics

I think you have to look at the proces more than the numbers.

Boy was two weeks of recording, because they came in with finished songs.
October is a bit messy (loss of lyrics, starting from leftovers (IE Saturday Night) and finished in a hurry. War took them some time (in their own minds) but now seems lightning quick. As with boy they went into the studio with lost of semi-finished stuff (NYD, SBS)

With the arrival of Eno/lanois the process becomes really drawn out (see TUF-documentary), Eno is treating the band as his personal synthesiser/drum kit at times, with Lanois adding layers and layers of other percussion and instrumentation. After that (luckily) they cut everything down to basics for final mastering (see JT: classic albums).

Rattle and Hum and Zooropa are their only truly inspired albums since war.
R&H: They were in the US, got inspiration from people, places, old music and did their inspired take on things.
Zooropa: on tour, watching TV (duh) again melting influences with inspiration.

In both cases they were simply in a groove, making music and not being able to stop. And like an expanding black hole sucking in everything around them. With Eno at the helm they end up mostly staring at wallpaper, which takes the fun and spontaneity out of writing and recording.

Note that R&H is Jimmy Iovine producing (who basically just records and that's it) and Zooropa is mostly Edge/Flood. So in both cases it's just recording songs and not overthinking stuff too much.

Everything else was just them labouring away at ideas and partial songs. Notably AB. The amount of outtakes for HTDAAB and NLOTH suggests they are still inspired, but also that they somehow lack direction.

5 million = 12 million?

Wow, even if I agree that the music industry has changed, and sales figures are not to be equivalent to the 80s or 90s, I think that's exaggerating abit, Mr. Hewson.

I think he has a point, average numbers for bestselling albums (without splitting the sales per decade), plus some example of competitors

80s =25-50million (JT=28, R&H=14, Thriller 110, Back in black 44, True blue=24)
90s =20-40million (AB=17, back street boys, shania twain=40, metallica=22)
00s =10-30million (ATYCLB=12, HTDAAB=9, back street boys=24, linking park=24)
10s = 5-10? (NLOTH-5, Viva la Vida=10)

The most recent artist with 20million album sales is Usher-Confessions (2004!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_worldwide

Looking at rock bands only, USA sales 1991-2007 (a good but not perfect indication of WW sales):

5 - Metallica - 48.670m
13 - U2 - 32.087m
17 - Pearl Jam - 29.373m
27 - Creed - 25.922m
38 - Guns n Roses - 23.641m

41 - Green Day - 22.864m
46 - Red Hot Chilli Peppers - 21.547m
54 - Linkin Park - 19.709m
58 - Limp Bizkit - 19.264m

64 - Beastie Boys - 18.827m
67 - REM - 18.318m
74 - Van Halen - 17.909m
75 - Korn - 17.784m

Note that a lot of numbers are missing, that because I've taken out retired/oldies (Beatles, Floyd) boybands/pop, and country (5 spots in the top 10, incl. #1 =Garth Brooks)
Michael Jackson (pre death) was at a lowly #61. Also missing are Euro-bands, simply because their relative lack of US sales. (Coldplay 2000-2011=50million/4 albums, with approx 25% coming from US sales)

Well, last time they changed because of relevance they had massive success with ATYCLB

Marginally so...I would say a steady decline (while staying relevant) with a bit of a boost from at times excellent singles, don't underestimate the AB singles either:

JT=25
R&H=14
AB=17
Zoo=8
Pop=6
ATYCLB=12
HTDAAB=9
NLOTH=5

The main problem with NLOTH is the lack of an obvious single. Boots is single material but barely indicative of the album (and put off people as much as it attracted attention, as with Discothèque, many people simple didn't get it).

Magnificent works on MOR/AOR radio, but does not appeal to a younger audience. Breathe and NLOTH are just too far out for a single.

Being Born might have worked in much the same way that WOWY or TUF were unexpectedly successful singles, but would've been fairly risky. MOS has some "One" qualities to it but would have to have been edited to 5mins. Stand Up comedy has some beatles-like qualities; might've worked.

The only recent stuff I've heard that's pure single material is Boy Falls from the Sky. Note that HMTMKMKM and Electrical storm were excellent singles. So imho, they absolutely have to release it.

The irony is that even in Boyctober days they didn't really manage to be a singles band (unlike the bands they aspired to: the Jam, the Police).

yeah

13 years

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