Classic or Dud: U2

Fricke, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

i can hardly read it for all the saliva

A FB friend of Mr Veg's wrote "It's their best album since Pop!" to which we were both like, ok that's a REALLY low bar.

ouch.

i happen to think that POP was their last really good album ..

That SFJ post is the glibbest, snarkiest thing I've ever seen from him. It's a weird thing to have on the New Yorker website.

You think the publisher brought Fricke into the office, poured a couple glasses of whisky, leaned over the table and said "I need you Fricke, I got a bad one here, worst yet, I need the old David Fricke review, I need your magic."

lol

bet it's more like "hey dave, new u2 album" "five?" "yup" "cool"

dude might not even bother with the star ratings himself, just pump out the copy and let someone else sweat where on the four-to-five spread this lands

I doubt he even pumps out the copy himself.

c'mon it's not a nancy drew novel, it's just seven paragraphs

Pump it out dave

U2 needs u

lol chr1sb3singer! bad U2 really brings ILX's funny to the fore.

confession - had to google the ref

Confession (Had to Google the Ref) - lyrics by Bono and the Edge / production by Dangermouse

ok.

forgive the noob (uk vs usa perhaps) groove, but all this inner circle joke thing is going over me.
but is there history between david fricke and u2 ?

i read the review, and even i found the review somewhat over zealous.

[ ftr : as a fan of achtung baby onwards, i think the album is ok. nothing more, nothing less.
hoping a few more listens may reveal its secrets more]

i wonder if there was just one guy in the boardroom that went 'uh.. guys.. '. he probably got shouted down left right and centre, and is now pulling his 'what did i tell you?!' face.

^ assuming you're talking about Rolling Stone here

is there history between david fricke and u2 ?

There's history between David Fricke and five-star bands

ahh.
he has form then.
fair enough.

At first listen this has a couple of solid cuts but the rest passed me by, kinda like how to dismantle an atomic bomb ended up for me. I think pop was actually pretty great and no line on the horizon was also really good except for the middle section. I imagine this will grow on me a bit since I generally like their sound but it'll also probably end up with HTDAAB and october and rattle & hum, which are basically the last ones I'd listen to in their discography at this point.

i agree with omar.

Carefully!

(is how you dismantle an atomic bomb)

RS' deal for years has been to give bands they want to do "exclusive" cover stories on a 5-star review -- hence the nutball writeups for the Who's It's Hard and whatever the fuck that Jagger solo thing was.

huh, beasties didn't get a cover in 2004. maybe fricke's 5 star of To The 5 Boroughs was a labor of love

I think sometimes RS does it to cover their asses just in case, cf. publishing a 5-star review of The Final Cut on the off chance it took off/Floyd toured that year.

same drill as Q in the mid-90s mega-selling era. hence Oasis' BHN getting 5 stars.

To be fair to Fricke he kind of gives 5 star reviews to everything. In his King Crimson live review he stopped just shy of calling the new line-up the greatest rock band that has ever existed.

ahh.
that said, is there anything wrong with loving music to that level.
people who know me IRL know that i flip from genre/band to genre/band on a daily basis declaring the latest groove to be the best ever.
i realise this a shallow take on the art, but so what.
a quick hit of momentary bliss is sometimes all you need to get you through the day to day grind.

all this fake surprise that U2 are shit

is there anything wrong with loving music to that level.

It's go nothing to do with love and everything to do with marketing.

how you dismantle an atomic bomb

I thought the answer was practice, practice, practice?

give it five stars

It's go nothing to do with love and everything to do with marketing.

ahh, such a cynic.

there are times i love my world of innocence and naivety.

(and my bills are paid by the world of marketing software - so i should be more attuned to such darkness !)

can't give it away

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/227923/u2s-free-album-downloaded-by-less-than-5-of-users/

Millions of people have U2 and don't even know it. Please: discuss U2 with your children. The more you know ...

The more you ignore them, the more annoying they get

It should be noted that they are practically at the Bridges To Babylon point in their career.

with BTB the better album

Well, yeah.

You'll never unmake a saint of Bono...

over 20, have never liked U2 - basically because I thought the music was boring. In the 80s, I found them overbearing and WAY TOO MUCH on the radio. After that, I found them one of those brands you simply have no feeling for because, hey, it's a brand. I actually did think it was interesting when they started embracing dance music/electronics, but more in a conceptual way than actually enjoying most of what they did.

Anyway, I won't have to deal with this until I get a new laptop, but I think more disturbing than the fact iTunes would work with U2 like this (which really isn't that surprising, unless the files' undeletability is true), is the 5-star review. I don't read RS, and haven't in a while, but imo that kind of endorsement smacks of a fairly obvious promotional tie-in. Do you believe these people (RS) think they're doing good work, or are they resigned to know all of this is part of the business as a whole, justifying it by saying they are speaking to/for their audience? The remark above about wanting to believe someone really loves music that much -- yeah people actually do love music that much, but considering the reaction from most of the world apart from David Fricke and RS, it's hardly cynical to see something like that as part of a marketing plan.

how do people get themselves into situations where they are plagued by marketing campaigns?

Those still holding regular reviewing gigs.

sounds horrible

This isn't in my iTunes or iPhone yet, what gives?

I'm sorry, I haven't really been paying attention and am now skimming. Is this true? Surely not...

have you tried deleting it?

― john wahey (NickB)

You can't.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

yeah afaict the best you can do is hide it

https://twitter.com/AndyRichter/status/509701981053927424