GibsonGirl
ONE love, blood, life
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2002
- Messages
- 13,270
STING2 said:
Safe radio friendly route? Do you realize that the songs on the POP album received more airplay on radio stations than songs from either of the last two albums did.
Discotheque and Staring at the Sun both cracked the US national top 75 radio airplay chart making it into the top 30. Hell, even "Last Night On Earth" made it on to that chart spending a few weeks at #74.
But with BOMB, only ONE song, Vertigo made the top 75 airplay chart and it did not crack the top 30! BOMB has been U2's least friendly radio album since the Unforgettable Fire in the United States.
Have you listened to the radio these days? If U2 want to make it into the Top 30, they'll have to delve into the scary world of R&B (perish the thought) or water down their own sound to the point of Coldplay/Maroon 5. Seriously, the radio is a scary place right now. Yesterday on the "Rock Of The Rock", Oz FM I heard the latest crap from the Black Eyed Peas, followed by Avril Lavigne's "punk," and a fucking Mariah Carey song. And that was on a supposedly "rock" station! If HTDAAB had been released about ten years earlier, I think it would have received a little more airplay than it is currently. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing - there are a lot of great songs on HTDAAB, some of them ranking quite high with me. The album is certainly a hell of a lot better than ATYCLB, in my view.
That being said, I honestly think U2 need to dream it up again. Not because of the bloody indie music scene (when have U2 ever been a part of the indie music scene? Passengers? But some people don't even consider that a U2 album anyway) but because it's one of the many things that makes U2 U2. The U2 of the past seemed rather eager to try new things. The U2 of the present seem a little too cautious these days. However, with songs like Love And Peace Or Else and Fast Cars on the latest album, I think there definitely is promise for a new direction in the future. I don't mind if U2's next album is similar to HTDAAB because we all know U2 likes to finish up a sound with a trilogy. But I will mind if the album after that is still the same thing. I don't think that will happen anyway, not with U2... At least I hope it won't.
As someone else here said earlier, U2 could be the type of band to redefine what it means to be a group of rockers in their fourties and fifties.