Rather than generating the kind of hype Apple is accustomed to, Songs of Innocence generated a huge Twitter backlash, with the company posting a guide on how to remove the album from your library on its support page.
The Guardian theorizes, however, that we hate U2 because we hate Bono, while the New York Observer thinks they’re the Guy Fieri of music, which one assumes means selling bombastic, tacky crap to as wide an audience as possible.
When How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb came out, it featured more of the mom rock that made its predecessor a success, along with an iPod commercial that put Bono singing “Vertigo” on every screen in America. For a band who was so keen to bite corporate America’s hand just seven years prior, it looked suspiciously like selling out.
That shift particularly affected the public perception of Bono. As the Guardian notes, the singer often comes off as “holier than thou” to his detractors, “rich beyond his wildest dreams and hanging out with princes, presidents and preachers [but one who] nonetheless won’t shut up about poor people.”
U2 might have thought they were getting in on the surprise album bandwagon, as everyone from Beyoncé to Skrillex is doing it, but the biggest surprise is how little it mattered. Bono has spent the last three and a half decades trying to get everyone to like him, but the greatest PR coup he could ever pull is to finally stop caring.
http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/how-...gn=pubexchange
