Up to 10-20 plays now - depending on the song. Here's where I'm at.
My big takeaway at this point is this is an album for us. It's for fans. Which makes the single choices a bit more understandable - they're more mainstream. They're not so much for us.
The rest of the album? So much of what this record is is going to be lost/undervalued/misunderstood if you don't know the U2 backstory and catalogue.
This isn't a classic U2 record. The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby were. Those records were defining. Game changing.
This is a record from a band that spent years being defining, and is now happy to simply defy. Defy age, defy criticism, defy cynicism.
There are a few 'god given rights' in our society. The right for kids to think their parents are unfair and their teachers are mean. The right to think your local council is wasting your money. The right to hate the media. We all do them.
For a section of music fans, those who have come through their youth and are now exploring, creating, forging new musical paths, there is a right to hate a band like U2. They are yesterday, but without the good grace to stay in yesterday. And they have the weight to suck oxygen away from the new acts the defining acts. They are loathed for it.
And that's fine. Finally, it seems, U2 have accepted they'll not win those people over while still making the music they want to make. And that is music that fills arenas and stadiums. Music that soars and leaves a crowd walking away feeling mightier, more elated, more hopeful than they were three hours earlier. Music that tells U2's own story.
It's no surprise this record isn't gaining universal appeal - even on this fan-board. It's nostalgic, emotional, melodramatic. Clumsy and cheesy at times. It's romantic. And that will never have universal appeal.
What seems clear though is that there is a good proportion of U2 fans who love the band because of the very music, themes, ambitions and hopefulness this album taps into. Perhaps that's what attracted them to U2. Perhaps its what moved them during a concert when they felt lifted somewhere higher than they ever expected to feel. Perhaps a lyric that seemed melodramatic or pompous to many cut through and spoke with clarity to them.
For me, it's not a classic. It's not Achtung Baby or The Joshua Tree or The Unforgettable Fire. It's not even Boy or Zooropa. And nor could it have ever been. There's no precedent for a band as big as U2 - and there have only been a handful in history - creating a broad-appeal classic for their 14th album. I suspect it will never happen for the simple fact the audience who decides on what is classic is, at any given moment, considerably younger than U2 are now. Younger musicians and fans are constantly searching to create or find new sounds and styles to exult, not old ones to remember. That's how it should be.
But as a long-time fan of the enormity of the anthems and atmosphere U2 delivered over a 40 year career, Songs of Experience is better than the best thing I thought they could do in 2017.