Interesting article on NLOTH

[U2girl]

From the forum over at atu2.com

Universal worried about U2´s Album sales potential - Miami Latin music | Examiner.com

 

[super fly guy]

All i can say is fuck universal,they shouldnt have any say on an artists sound. Especially U2!

 

[silkensky]

Is this supposed to be recent? I see an article date of December 2009.

 

[purpleoscar]

It was a more progressive album before the changes. It probably included Every breaking wave.

 

[BVS]

What was interesting about it? It's an article written by an interferencer.

 

[Rachel D.]

¨Universal certainly didn’t think this album would sell. This is why they had internal arguments with U2 and its people, and it’s why the album changed direction midway through the project and was delayed in its release¨.

Well, that obviously didn't help. Maybe Universal should have kept their noses out of it and left it alone.

 

[digitize]

If this is true... then wow. That's bad stuff. Universal probably hurt their own profits through this, ironically.

If this is true.

 

[lemonfly]

That's a big revelation (and quite a shocking one if true ). Of course it's common for the record company to cajole artists into a certain direction, but I would have thought a band of U2's clout would have been way, way beyond that. To think the creative direction of the album changed due to a group of panicky suits not knowing how to market it...wow.

 

[JamietheEdgefan]

Well, that obviously didn't help. Maybe Universal should have kept their noses out of it and left it alone.

Yeah, if this really did happen, hopefully it's shown universal that forcing their creative hand wasn't a good idea, and prevents them from doing so in the future.

 

[cobl04]

You would think that the "head of international marketing" at Universal would turn up more than 7 results when google searched.

What a fucking piece of rubbish.

 

[hillers]

Funny, coming from a company who actually leaked the album themselves.

 

[nielsgov]

If this is true, then that's horrible. The record company shouldn't have anything to say about the music.

 

[Registered Dude]

could have been Jimmy Iovine..

 

[popacrobat]

didn't Iovine say that Every Breaking Wave was his favorite from whatever he heard? If he himself had that much influence that they'd change course on the album, then I'm sure EBW would have made it.

 

[Von Schloopen]

"... none of that [experimental music] really appeared on the record ... because it sounded kind of synthetic. It sounded kind of like 'world music' add-on. I'm sure it would have got a few people saying, oh, how interesting, they've broken out into North African music, but actually it just didn't sound convincing. We were very impressed by the music while we were there, but there was no realistic or emotionally satisfying way of marrying it using the music that we were doing, so in the end not very much of it at all showed through." - Brian Eno.

I guess Universal got to him as well.