U2 is struggling to grab new listeners
U2’s latest album, “No Line on the Horizon,” debuted at the top of the charts when it was released in spring this year and has sold a respectable 1 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But the CD, which features more electronic music experimentation from U2, is the group’s lowest selling album in more than a decade. It represents a marked drop from 2004’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” which has sold 3.2 million copies to date, and 2000’s 4.3 million seller, “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.”
“The commercial challenges have to be confronted,” bassist Adam Clayton said during an interview backstage at “Saturday Night Live,” as awaits the band’s performance on the show’s season kickoff. “But I think, in a sense, the more interesting challenge is, ‘What is rock ‘n’ roll in this changing world?’ Because, to some extent, the concept of the music fan – the concept of the person who buys music and listens to music for the pleasure of music itself – is an outdated idea.”
The first single from U2’s new album – the driving, upbeat “Get on Your Boots” – didn’t have a similar platform and didn’t crack Billboard’s top 30 singles pop chart. Meanwhile, “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” was featured in a Blackberry ad as part of the new partnership between the mobile device and U2 but was not released as a single.
Songs from the new album are clearly resonating with die-hard fans. “Get on Your Boots” drew one of the more frenetic responses from the crowd during a recent concert in Foxborough, Mass., outside of Boston, as did the anthemic show closer, “Moment of Surrender.” Yet the album hasn’t had the impact for which U2 had hoped.
While noting that signature U2 songs such as “Beautiful Day” and even “One” weren’t massive or immediate hits, Bono does acknowledge disappointment that the band didn’t quite “pull off the pop songs” with the new work.
“But we weren’t really in that mindset,” U2’s charismatic front man said, “and we felt that the album was a kind of an almost extinct species, and we should approach it in totality and create a mood and a feeling, and a beginning, middle and an end. And I suppose we’ve made a work that is a bit challenging for people who have grown up on a diet of pop stars.”
Some would argue that the Irish rockers remain pop’s biggest act. They are entering their fourth decade of music-making with a string of awards, from Grammys to Billboard to Golden Globes, tens of millions of records sold and a social impact that few musical acts can ever hope to achieve. Still, they find themselves in the same challenging position as most pop groups today, who must seek new ways to connect with music buyers in a declining industry and an increasingly fractious entertainment world.
“Music exists in an environment where people are multitasking, and I think that’s a very different environment,” said Clayton, who grew up appreciating jazz but realized “it was for people who took life a certain way, but it wasn’t part of the modern world for me.
“I worry that the world of rock ‘n’ roll that I grew up in is destined to end up that way.”
U2 is still hustling to promote the CD. When it was released in March, the group did “Good Morning America” and an unprecedented five-night appearance on “Late Show With David Letterman.” More recently, U2 appeared on “SNL.”
“I love to see an outsized band like U2 behaving like they’re in the kindergarten and just doing what you do with your first album — taking it to the market, setting up your table, selling your wares, selling it out the street corners, giving out fliers,” says an animated Bono, breaking into a wide grin behind his trademark sunglasses. “I think selling out is when you stop believing enough in your music to put yourself out to explain it to people.”
U2’s “360” tour is a massive undertaking that has the band performing in the center of stadiums, hence the “360” title. The production, which includes stages that take days to dismantle, has been one of the top grossing tours in the country since it kicked off in September, despite a price tag that runs upward of $250 (at least 10,000 tickets for $30 have been made available for every show).
And when the band played at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., last month, it broke attendance records with a crowd of about 84,500 fans.
“In many ways, U2 has had such an enormous amount of success over the years we’re almost proof against that,” the band’s longtime manager, Paul McGuinness, says, talking about U2 and the music industry’s decline. “We’re still selling a lot of recorded music, but it’s a much smaller part of our business than playing live. This tour, by the time it’s finished, we would have played … to roughly 6 million people.”
It is during live shows when U2 feels the most connection with its audience. Despite the stadium shows and the immense stage structure, the band insists that this time, the set up has created perhaps a greater intimacy with fans than the group has enjoyed in the past. They are literally surrounded by fans.
“The staging itself is something we’ve tried to do for a long, long time. The idea of playing 360 — it’s never been done successfully, … where everybody gets good sound and good visuals, and we managed to achieve that, I think,” says Mullen, who, like the rest of his band mates, is affable and thoughtful as he talks about U2 backstage at “SNL.”
“The thing about U2 has always been its audience, and in this environment, I think the audience is so important, and the reaction is so important,” he said.
On tour, U2 can best gauge fan reaction to the new material. Last month at the cavernous Gillette Stadium near Boston, it was almost as frenzied and passionate as the reaction U2 gets for its classics. A roar came from the crowd as the band opened the show with “Magnificent,” and the energy kept building as U2 performed four more new songs, including “Get on Your Boots.”
U2’s Blackberry partnership includes an application that allows users to download the CD and photographs, liner notes and more.
Yet the band is also careful not to be too unwieldy when it comes to attempting new avenues to promote its music.
“We’re trying to do everything we can on that front without having to change what we’re about artistically: The music stays sacrosanct,” The Edge says. “We are much more focused on being the best than being the biggest.”
And that means perhaps making the kind of album that doesn’t guarantee hits but does guarantee surprises and new ideas, which “No Line” has delivered.
“The biggest danger for a band like U2 is accepting that you’ve reached a certain age, and, therefore, you can just actually sit back,” says Mullen.
“That’s not what we signed up to do. We want to make relevant, great music, and Bono has said numerous times, ‘One crap album and you’re out,'” he adds. “We’ve avoided it so far.”
“No Line on the Horizon” is U2’s twelfth studio album. The band collaborated with producers Brian Eno and Danny Lanois from June 2007 to December 2008 for the album, allowing them to be involved in the songwriting process. Writing and recording for the album took place in four different cities. No Line on the Horizon was released in five different formats and was made available for pre-order on the iTunes Store on 19 January 2009, the day “Get on Your Boots” premiered on radio. iTunes album pre-orders contained bonus tracks unavailable with any other version. Digital versions were also initially available from Amazon.com in MP3 format, as well as U2.com in both MP3 and FLAC formats. In addition to the digital versions of the album, five physical formats of the album were released, four of which were considered “limited editions”.
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