U2’s latest album, Songs of Innocence, has a not-horrible 65 rating on Metacritic. It’s on the divide between passing and failing, which sounds about right; it’s not actively terrible, like No Line on the Horizon, but no one’s gonna question you if you already removed it from your iTunes. Much of the bad press Innocence received had to do with its distribution model, so it’s sort of refreshing to hear a musician, Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins, bad-mouth the actual music.
Though he did save some vitriol for the release method, too.
“I mean, I think they probably thought it was gonna be a great idea, ‘Here’s the deal: everybody who has an iPhone, gets your record. And they get it for free!’ And they thought, probably, ‘Well that’s pretty awesome!’ but they didn’t really take into consideration the Big Brother feeling that kinda goes along with like, ‘[In menacing voice] You have the new U2 record’…You couldn’t get rid of it and they actually had to come up with an app to get rid of it, that’s horrible.
“I liked all the YouTube footage of all the crap: ‘What the f*ck is this sh*t doin’ on my phone, dog? Get this sh*t off my phone, dog!’ Haha, it was like, HAHAHAHAhahaha.
“What happened to U2, man? I don’t think people are that hyped on them,” he [said]. “I don’t know that any of that new album has anything great on it,” Hawkins continues. “I listened to it once, but it’s so marred by that whole sort of, like I said, Orwellian, 1984 extreme that it just kinda sounds like a fart any way you listen to it.” (Via)
Thedge, Bonobos, Adam Claytwothousandpounds, and Larry Mullen Sr.’s Son will respond with their thoughts on Sonic Highways by sending you an iMessage you can never delete.
