SOE- 27: And SOE it Begins

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All this kind of highlights what the band has been saying for the last several years. It's really hard to even be noticed at all anymore in the music scene. You have a few huge names, and then a huge glut mid size and smaller artists.

For example, I had no idea that Foo Fighters were releasing anything. They played their new song once on the radio here. See next to nothing on social media, and just saw something about them touring. That's it. And they are a big band. Everything gets lost in the shuffle.

Things are becoming even more fractured in the Internet age in terms of wide exposure to whatever's out there. Back in the day, you just had a few network channels, newspapers/magazines and the radio. Now we can kind of cherry pick what we want to "follow" or watch and so on. And if you chose one thing and not another, chances are you'll miss out on hearing about something until after the fact. That probably applied in the past too, but it's certainly a bit more prominent with all the sources you can have for things these days.
 
And for like 70% of them the only context they have of them is that they snuck their album onto their phone.

let's take someone born in 1990. they'd be 27 now. here's their U2 Experience.

10 when Beautiful Day was big. It's a pretty cheesy song!
14 when Vertigo was in the ipod ad. They were the old band in the commercial. Hardly cool.
18 when Get On Your Boots was out. Enough said.
24 when SOI invaded their phone.

now, take a 20 year old:

they'd have been 17 when SOI was put on their phone. 12 when Boots was out. That's a pretty shitty U2 experience.

Basically, U2 need to ignore young people, stop aiming for pop hits and act their age.
 
let's take someone born in 1990. they'd be 27 now. here's their U2 Experience.

10 when Beautiful Day was big. It's a pretty cheesy song!
14 when Vertigo was in the ipod ad. They were the old band in the commercial. Hardly cool.
18 when Get On Your Boots was out. Enough said.
24 when SOI invaded their phone.

now, take a 20 year old:

they'd have been 17 when SOI was put on their phone. 12 when Boots was out. That's a pretty shitty U2 experience.

Basically, U2 need to ignore young people, stop aiming for pop hits and act their age.


Be fair...you put such an "anti millennial U2" spin on it. I'll give you SOI and NLOTH but you could easily say:

10 when Beautiful Day was big. It's a classic song.
11 when U2 played the Super Bowl with an unreal performance of Streets that is still mentioned today as one of the best SB performances

12 when U2 performed an incredible version of Walk On at the Grammys and went on to win a boat load of awards

14 when Vertigo was in the ipod ad. They were the Beautiful Day band in the commercial with a more rock song vs pop

15 when they won another boat load of Grammys and had the biggest tour of all time (albeit briefly)

18 when U2 360 tour was going on and was the biggest tour in history by any account and was an amazing spectacle

Since 2009, I would agree with you but pre-2009 U2 was very popular.

Also, if you are going to take a swipe at Get On Your Boots, you should also mention the guy liner and performance at the Grammys that was awful.
 
I wasn't much older than that. Beautiful Day came out when I was 13, and many of my friends 11-12. It was an instant classic. At my school we came up with piss-take lyrics and sang them loudly whenever it came on in the car or at the mall or whatever. U2 were still kind of cool then. All these mates went to the 360 Tour because it was one of those "event" tours by a band they remembered as producing great hits of their childhood.

Vertigo was also huge. People at high school knew me as a U2 fan and came up to me randomly just to say how good it was.

Sweetest Thing had also been very popular.

A lot of my colleagues today were about 8-10 years old when ATYCLB hit and they too recall Beautiful Day, Elevation, Stuck in a Moment, and Vertigo well (other singles from ATYCLB and HTDAAB don't seem to have made much of a dent). I recently got shit from one, who's 25, because I hate Stuck in a Moment. She scarcely believed me. How could I possibly hate such a definitive song, apparently.

But Cosmo, come on. Some of your list is definitely over-reaching. The Super Bowl performance is irrelevant to any younger person outside the US. Who the fuck recalls that Walk On performance? And Grammys? Yeah nah, those have no credibility to anyone.

Boots, ultimately, hurt U2 badly. Then SOI. They haven't recovered, and probably won't. But in a commercial/chart sense I'm not sure why they should, really. They've a strong discography and an established touring reputation that draws in tens of thousands of punters wherever they go. Fundamentally U2 don't need a big radio hit, and desperately shambling after one is only tarnishing their legacy in the long run.
 
Boots was a complete dud - so much so, that I dont believe it had an impact on U2 in any way.

People dont remember it as a bad song (and hate u2 for it), they just dont remember it
 
Boots was a complete dud - so much so, that I dont believe it had an impact on U2 in any way.

People dont remember it as a bad song (and hate u2 for it), they just dont remember it



I honestly think it did have an impact because when boots came out and leading up to nloth. U2 were still seen as relevant. Boots was played on BBC radio one here a lot. Radio one has a 16-24 target audience. It was literally rammed down our throats by the BBC promotion.

U2 still had the general public watching at this point, if they had released a huge hit then they would have maybe been relevant at least up until soi

Boots did a lot of damage I think, it was the track when a lot of people gave up on them. It was probably the moment u2 turned into a band that wasnt really about what music there releasing anymore
 
I honestly think it did have an impact because when boots came out and leading up to nloth. U2 were still seen as relevant. Boots was played on BBC radio one here a lot. Radio one has a 16-24 target audience. It was literally rammed down our throats by the BBC promotion.

U2 still had the general public watching at this point, if they had released a huge hit then they would have maybe been relevant at least up until soi

Boots did a lot of damage I think, it was the track when a lot of people gave up on them. It was probably the moment u2 turned into a band that wasnt really about what music there releasing anymore

Maybe! I just know that at the time, I worked in a record shop, and the response here in Canada was very much a "meh" from both the casual and fanatic music fans. I dont think anybody voiced active disdain for U2 because of it (certainly compared to the reaction that came with SOI). I guess that's what I was getting it - Boots didnt seem to help them in any way, but it didnt seem to hurt them either

if they wanted to take advantage of whatever relevance they held onto with HTDAAB, they probably shoulndt have waited 5 years
 
let's take someone born in 1990. they'd be 27 now. here's their U2 Experience.

10 when Beautiful Day was big. It's a pretty cheesy song!
14 when Vertigo was in the ipod ad. They were the old band in the commercial. Hardly cool.
18 when Get On Your Boots was out. Enough said.
24 when SOI invaded their phone.

now, take a 20 year old:

they'd have been 17 when SOI was put on their phone. 12 when Boots was out. That's a pretty shitty U2 experience.

Basically, U2 need to ignore young people, stop aiming for pop hits and act their age.

The last part? yes they do, because the yoof isn't biting and most of that 40k at the JT gigs aren't either when it comes to the new music.

As regards the being 10 when Beautiful Day came out? funny, my first musical purchases aged around 12yo were not the new acts of the day (1980) but the then current singles by Queen, Roxy Music and Bowie, ie. artists that were at that point in time quite a bit older than my peer group's general tastes. Notably, then, the singles charts and radio stations were far more friendly to older (late 30s, early 40s) artists than they are now. And all three of those artists songs reached #1 or went top 5 that year.

I'm not sure but I'd imagine that U2 were the last "over 40" band to score a UK #1 single back in 2005.
 
Maybe! I just know that at the time, I worked in a record shop, and the response here in Canada was very much a "meh" from both the casual and fanatic music fans. I dont think anybody voiced active disdain for U2 because of it (certainly compared to the reaction that came with SOI). I guess that's what I was getting it - Boots didnt seem to help them in any way, but it didnt seem to hurt them either

if they wanted to take advantage of whatever relevance they held onto with HTDAAB, they probably shoulndt have waited 5 years



Suppose it was maybe different in different places

I do agree about waiting 5 years but if you consider that the vertigo tour finished in December 2006 and nloth came out February 2009. Thats only just over two years between finishing the tour and releasing the record. Which I don't think is that bad
 
Boots was a complete dud - so much so, that I dont believe it had an impact on U2 in any way.

People dont remember it as a bad song (and hate u2 for it), they just dont remember it

I agree with you here. But that's kind of the problem. By the time SOI came out, They ended up being out of the loop on radio for not just 5 years, but nearly 9 or 10 because of the disinterest of Boots and subsequent singles.

I think if Magnificent was the first single, it might have been a whole different story for NLOTH as an album, and then a better lead in to SOI. Maybe they wouldn't have done the Apple thing cause they didn't feel desperate to make some crazy huge splash. And so on...

Interesting what a small decision could do to a trajectory of an aging band.

or i'm just full of shit. lol
 
Defo think magnificent could have had a better impact for them. Its u2 being u2. It wouldn't have got the wow factor but it would have got the "is that new u2 on the radio" instead of " what's this crap" that boots got

Think the title nloth would have been a good first single aswell. It would have got the "thats u2 being abit different " reaction
 
I wasn't much older than that. Beautiful Day came out when I was 13

But Cosmo, come on. Some of your list is definitely over-reaching. The Super Bowl performance is irrelevant to any younger person outside the US. Who the fuck recalls that Walk On performance? And Grammys? Yeah nah, those have no credibility to anyone
.



So first off, I really thought you were in your 50s, so mind=blown

As for the Super Bowl, I'm using it in the context that it was an experience a lot of younger people had with U2. It's the most watched event in the US and all ages watch it. Fair that people likely don't talk about it now but at the time if a kid were watching, they wouldn't have been annoyed or thought it was cheesy/uncool.

With regard to the Grammys, I'm not saying they prove anything other then if people watched them they saw that this band had songs and albums that were nominated/won. Yeah people don't talk about it now but at the time if a kid were watching, it was a positive U2 experience vs SOI showing up on their phone.

Lastly,that Walk On performance, no one remembers it so fair point. However, it was an epic performance and might be my favorite live performance by them of any song (non-concerts). That ending was magical!

Any way, i think we do agree that ATYCLB and HTDAAB were positive impacts vs negative.
 
I think Boots had zero effect on U2's popularity whatsoever.

SOI is without a doubt the deal-breaker.



Soi got the reaction it did though because nobody was interested in new u2 anymore . People didn't want it. If bomb had of been released the same way everyone would have gone mad but in a good way.

Boots and nloth lost the interest of the non fan which led to the backlash when u2 gave away an album that nobody apart from the fans wanted
 
if they wanted to take advantage of whatever relevance they held onto with HTDAAB, they probably shoulndt have waited 5 years


I think this is ultimately what it comes down to.

But that's only in terms of new music. I don't think the public at large really cared if U2 had new music or not. 360 was a massive success, and I'd say that was the last time that the overall impression of U2 was positive.

I do think their image is rebounding, slowly but surely.
 
I'll never forget the franticness of trying to get SOI onto my iPhone. For whatever reason it didn't show up for like four hours. I had to steal my girlfriends phone and listen to it from the shitty phone speakers because my car didn't play nice with her phone.

Probably the like 0.005% of people who wanted the album and I just couldn't get it.
 
I think this is ultimately what it comes down to.



But that's only in terms of new music. I don't think the public at large really cared if U2 had new music or not. 360 was a massive success, and I'd say that was the last time that the overall impression of U2 was positive.



I do think their image is rebounding, slowly but surely.



Nloth sold really well for its time and compared to other artists that year. What was it 5 million copies sold. In the top ten best selling list of the year. People still wanted new u2 music then, the sales figures proved it. Boots and nloth lost that interests for most people apart from the fans
 
Boots and nloth lost that interests for most people apart from the fans

I really don't think so.

I know people here hate Boots, but it's reputation out in the rest of the world is non-existent. Why? It got like a week of solid airplay and then it disappeared. Literally no one has an opinion of it because they never heard it except for one week.
 
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I really don't think so.

I know people here hate Boots, but it's reputation out in the rest of the world is non-existent. Why? It got like a week of solid airplay and then it disappeared. Literally no one has an opinion of it because they never heard it except for one week.



It was totally different in the uk. Boots was around for a long while here. The BBC campaign really pushed it
 
NLOTH may as well never happened, outside of the fan base. I know people who were fans of ATYCLB and HTDAAB that probably don't even know NLOTH ever existed. Their next opinion of U2 wasn't until SOI became such a big deal, and that wasn't really a good thing. That pretty much stuck a fork in them, as far as appealing to the masses. 4.5 years between HTDAAB and NLOTH, and it makes little impact, and then 5.5 years between NLOTH and SOI, which was their next big public impact, but it was a negative impact. So you have roughly a decade of nothing, and then suddenly all this negative publicity... not going to help matters. They really shouldn't have waited so long between albums... that was part of what killed it.

However, despite this, U2 are still one of the biggest live acts in the world. But now, it's all based on past achievements. Despite their best efforts, they're now at roughly the same point The Rolling Stones were at in the Bridges to Babylon era. New material is just an excuse to get out there rake in the millions off the tour. TBT is their equivalent of "Anybody seen my baby". I know that they probably hate it, but that's reality.
 
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let's just hope that it doesn't take U2 20 years to record whatever their Blue & Lonesome is.

boots may have disappeared but it got slammed when it came out, and nloth didn't get good reviews. people heard about it, and what they heard wasn't good

:lol: at the idea of young people caring about U2 playing at or winning Grammys. The only people who care about the Grammys are U2 and Kanye.

I think that Bono palling around with Bush Jr and Blair did as much to hurt their credibility in the 00s as the SOI release did. It made him, and by extension U2, seem to be in cahoots with the corporatist architects of the "War On Terror," and if there's anything that can be said about Young People in the 00s (of which I was one), it's that they did not fucking like George W Bush, Tony Blair, their wars, or Bush's service to the rich at the expense of everyone else.
 
let's just hope that it doesn't take U2 20 years to record whatever their Blue & Lonesome is.

boots may have disappeared but it got slammed when it came out, and nloth didn't get good reviews. people heard about it, and what they heard wasn't good

[emoji38] at the idea of young people caring about U2 playing at or winning Grammys. The only people who care about the Grammys are U2 and Kanye.

I think that Bono palling around with Bush Jr and Blair did as much to hurt their credibility in the 00s as the SOI release did. It made him, and by extension U2, seem to be in cahoots with the corporatist architects of the "War On Terror," and if there's anything that can be said about Young People in the 00s (of which I was one), it's that they did not fucking like George W Bush, Tony Blair, their wars, or Bush's service to the rich at the expense of everyone else.
I honestly think most people don't give a crap about that. I don't think Bono's lost any sort of credibility at all. I think they're old, and this is the natural cycle of what happens when rock bands get old. Especially rock bands that are old but want to act like they aren't old yet.
 
I honestly think most people don't give a crap about that. I don't think Bono's lost any sort of credibility at all. I think they're old, and this is the natural cycle of what happens when rock bands get old. Especially rock bands that are old but want to act like they aren't old yet.



I think the main comment I hear, especially off my circle of friends, is that they like the music but "Bono is a complete ####

Bono is fairly hated by most people here. It's got worse as times gone on, started around 2005.

I think the hate for Bono does over shadow u2 for a lot of people
 
I think the main comment I hear, especially off my circle of friends, is that they like the music but "Bono is a complete ####

Bono is fairly hated by most people here. It's got worse as times gone on, started around 2005.

I think the hate for Bono does over shadow u2 for a lot of people
I get that there are those who dislike him but there are more who either like him or don't give a shit either way.

Regardless - their inability to get new music to breakthrough the mainstream is not a product of whether or not Bono is liked or disliked. He's always been sort of polarizing and it didn't stop massive commercial success for 30 some odd years.

They are just now at the point where they are too old to reach where the mainstream is. They're still massively popular, and are still probably the biggest live draw in the world. It's just that the fan base is old now, and that's never going back.

Trying to pander to the younger crowd in order to achieve the near impossible mainstream success will only further hurt their legacy, as it will cast a shadow over their body of work in the eyes of the younger generations. The JT30 tour was a great way to try and fix this. I just hope they don't throw it all away with shoddy SOE marketing decisions.

People need to stop trying to justify why they can't get a hit single anymore and just accept the natural course of things.
 
I get that there are those who dislike him but there are more who either like him or don't give a shit either way.

Regardless - their inability to get new music to breakthrough the mainstream is not a product of whether or not Bono is liked or disliked. He's always been sort of polarizing and it didn't stop massive commercial success for 30 some odd years.

They are just now at the point where they are too old to reach where the mainstream is. They're still massively popular, and are still probably the biggest live draw in the world. It's just that the fan base is old now, and that's never going back.

Trying to pander to the younger crowd in order to achieve the near impossible mainstream success will only further hurt their legacy, as it will cast a shadow over their body of work in the eyes of the younger generations. The JT30 tour was a great way to try and fix this. I just hope they don't throw it all away with shoddy SOE marketing decisions.

People need to stop trying to justify why they can't get a hit single anymore and just accept the natural course of things.


I totally agree that a hit single isn't happening, if it did it would be their greatest achievement in my opinion. The boat has sailed for them but they had a great run more then more or less anyone at the top. I respect that they are still trying to achieve it but they need to take note what Alice cooper said a while back and just make music to please the fans. But saying that I love what I've heard of soe and I still love soi so I'm not complaining, what ever they are doing they are doing it right in my opinion
 
:lol: at the idea of young people caring about U2 playing at or winning Grammys. The only people who care about the Grammys are U2 and Kanye.



26 million people watched the 2001 Grammy awards (almost 20 million in 2006)....are you saying U2 being shown performing and winning several awards on that show didn't make any positive impression to the viewers at that time?

I guess then the Apple Ad did nothing either because who cares about commercials.

You wrote that any kid born in 1990 would essentially have negative/uncool associations with U2 and that's just not true up to 2009 or even 2014 for that matter.
 
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