In Defense of U2 | Songs of Innocence

Songs of Innocence: an aptly named title for an album that came under sharp criticism before anyone even heard it. Give someone free music, become the devil. Welcome to 2014. Although this should be nothing new coming from a band that has been vilified for the majority of the last 20 years if not longer. I’m not U2’s biggest fan but like most people there are more than a couple songs of theirs that I really like. And unlike most, I’m not afraid to admit it. How did U2 go from 80s superstar to afterthought, to enormously successful pop band, to guiltier pleasure than Nickelback? Is it because Bono seems like an insufferable douche? Is it because their guitarist is ridiculously named The Edge? Or is it really the music? Are these songs really innocent or are they trying to brainwash us into donating to Africa?

I can’t imagine why people hate early U2 albums too much. From Boy to The Joshua Tree they probably released their best work with songs like “I Will Follow”, “Gloria” “Sunday Bloody Sunday” “Pride” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and on and on. They rose to a stadium-filling band that sold millions of albums and I would bet every person that I know is familiar with some of these songs. Knowing them of course doesn’t mean that they are any good, but even if they are not your cup of tea per say, these songs clearly inspired other bands that you might like. Try listening to “Stories for Boys” and not think of The Offspring’s “Something to Believe In”. And as their sound grew out of post-punk and into anthemic rockers they laid down the foundation for bands like Snow Patrol,The Arcade Fire, The Killers, and most obviously, Coldplay. In fact, listening to U2 now seems like they are ripping off Coldplay ripping off U2. If nothing else it’s impressive that they created music that was different from others before them, that inspired other musicians, and at least in my shitty opinion, was not completely terrible.

The ‘90s was their experimental decade where they incorporated electronic music and messed around with guest vocals and drum loops and all sorts of crap. And most of the music was…crap. But screw it. It’s still commendable for a band that successful to try something different, and no they’re not the only famous artist to do it, but there are too many afraid to stray even slightly from their comfort zone. From 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind going forward they started to make more radio friendly pop-rock songs again; songs in my humble (yeah, that’s better) opinion that ranged from entirely forgettable to pretty damn good. But it was at this point that I think the U2 hate had grown disproportionally to the amount of effect their music should have had on your life. Starting then and now more than ever is the music that you hear your choice. Nobody listens to the radio or watches MTV unless they want to see trainwreck teenage reality shows. No one should be forcing U2 on you other than yourself. Or Apple. Uno, dos, tres, catorce! Fine, maybe you hate U2 because Bono’s Spanish sucks.

This year U2 released Songs of Innocence by giving it out for free. Wow that sounds like a nice gesture. But they automatically added it everyone’s itunes library (technically you had to click a button to download). How dare they?! The response to this was so over the top that it makes people hating U2 more hateable than U2 themselves. If you go to a concert and someone hands you their CD for free as you leave, would you punch them in the face and call them an asshole? Because that is basically how the internet community reacted. As if having a U2 album in their collection would ruin their credibility if they are showing their itunes library to someone else for some inexplicable reason. Heaven help us, your perfectly hipster iphone is ruined by U2’s presence among Neutral Milk Hotel and Grizzly Bear. But it’s an invasion of privacy! Yes, the government is reading every email you write and beating it to every selfie you send, but people are crying out about how a rock band is invading their privacy with a free album. God I hate people.

If the Songs of Innocence release method wasn’t U2, would people still be up in arms? If Radiohead didn’t give people the choice of their free album, would the blogosphere be so critical? I would guess not. I would guess if Thom Yorke individually mailed people bags of this feces for free people who applaud his genius.  But people are so programmed to despise everything about this band, in particular Bono. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to completely let Bono off the hook. I agree he is a shameless self-promoter, someone who patronizes everyone and preaches to them whether he seems to know what he is talking about or not. He also looks like a smug prick and his name is fucking Bono. But he does raise money for good causes like fighting AIDS, racism, sexual abuse, poverty, and like. If you’re going to be an annoying pop star the least you could do is raise money and awareness with your celebrity status. But this stuff just incites the haters to hate more. He doesn’t give enough money, he ‘s only doing it for the status, etc. And maybe that’s true. Of course most of us don’t give enough (or any) to support our most important personal causes either. We’re all too busy self-promoting ourselves via facebook, twitter, and ahem, blogs.

It’s easy to criticize everything these days (back in my day, we used to criticize only the bad things, and we used to roll our car windows down by hand, and…) It’s even easier to criticize things that we categorize away as pre-hated. We hate Bono for doing the things we do, only on a grander stage. We hate U2 because they’re too big and we hate everything popular except Taylor Swift.  We hate U2 because they force us think about Africa when we really just want to shake it off.  Musically, I can’t understand how someone hates them. Not interested in them, sure. U2can be bland and hasn’t been particularly creative for the past decade or so. But hate is too strong. And as someone who feels we should judge music more objectively I’m going on the record as saying that the new U2 album is…not bad. It still has the chiming delay guitar sound that the Edge has been providing for 30 years and I will not stop believing that this sound is quite pleasant. There are some good songs, some mediocre songs, and maybe a couple that will get in your head. Which you will then use to try to sue the band for invasion of your brain’s privacy. Because you are an internet troll and I hate you. Too. Get it?

The Drink: Rum and Guilt-free Cola.

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Bake

I'm nothing. Maybe less than nothing. I also write.

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