IT'S only been five years since their last album, but U2’s latest offering No Line On The Horizon, has been greeted like the Second Coming.
The BBC – the same BBC who would not run a charity appeal for Gaza because it might impinge on its impartiality – gave the band a week of free publicity across all platforms.
Turn on the TV, radio, internet, and there they were, sadly more often than not with the distinctly dodgy new single, Get On Your Boots, which on early listens is the worst song on the album.
So what gives down at the “impartial” BBC that allows blatant favouritism to the biggest band in the world? Has Bono, bored of playing with world leaders, taken over at Broadcasting House (from where he and the gang did a little live gig to the Regent St shoppers. Aired on the BBC, by the way)?
He hasn’t. But Lesley Douglas has become Director of Programming and Business Development at Universal Records, which U2 are signed to.
That’s the same Lesley Douglas who was controller of Radio 2 and 6Music who left the BBC in the wake of the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand scandal.
Beeb aside, music critics have been falling over themselves to label it the band’s best album ever. Probably because Bono has told them it’s their best album ever. But then he always says that.
Some of the reviews have, in typical muso style, been unreadable and bamboozling, describing not a set of songs but just printing a whole load of long and waffling words they’ve nicked out of the dictionary that look good but mean little.
They talk about new horizons (pun intended), experimentation, breaking new boundaries, Bono’s brave new world etc etc.
As a lifelong and committed U2 saddo, and therefore feeling well placed to judge, I don’t agree with any of it. In fact my wife probably summed it up best when she walked into the room, stood for 30 seconds, said: “Hmmmm, that sounds like U2,” and walked out again.
Which it does. In many ways it’s a compilation album. Not of songs, but of ideas. It’s peppered with riffs, bass lines and themes nicked from the whole U2 back catalogue.
Which means, to any U2 fan, it’s a great record. There are some belting tracks. It will work on the road. It may go down as their best ever, but I doubt it and I can’t se Bono changing the world with it.
As Brian’s mother said in the Monty Python classic: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy”.
The BBC – the same BBC who would not run a charity appeal for Gaza because it might impinge on its impartiality – gave the band a week of free publicity across all platforms.
Turn on the TV, radio, internet, and there they were, sadly more often than not with the distinctly dodgy new single, Get On Your Boots, which on early listens is the worst song on the album.
So what gives down at the “impartial” BBC that allows blatant favouritism to the biggest band in the world? Has Bono, bored of playing with world leaders, taken over at Broadcasting House (from where he and the gang did a little live gig to the Regent St shoppers. Aired on the BBC, by the way)?
He hasn’t. But Lesley Douglas has become Director of Programming and Business Development at Universal Records, which U2 are signed to.
That’s the same Lesley Douglas who was controller of Radio 2 and 6Music who left the BBC in the wake of the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand scandal.
Beeb aside, music critics have been falling over themselves to label it the band’s best album ever. Probably because Bono has told them it’s their best album ever. But then he always says that.
Some of the reviews have, in typical muso style, been unreadable and bamboozling, describing not a set of songs but just printing a whole load of long and waffling words they’ve nicked out of the dictionary that look good but mean little.
They talk about new horizons (pun intended), experimentation, breaking new boundaries, Bono’s brave new world etc etc.
As a lifelong and committed U2 saddo, and therefore feeling well placed to judge, I don’t agree with any of it. In fact my wife probably summed it up best when she walked into the room, stood for 30 seconds, said: “Hmmmm, that sounds like U2,” and walked out again.
Which it does. In many ways it’s a compilation album. Not of songs, but of ideas. It’s peppered with riffs, bass lines and themes nicked from the whole U2 back catalogue.
Which means, to any U2 fan, it’s a great record. There are some belting tracks. It will work on the road. It may go down as their best ever, but I doubt it and I can’t se Bono changing the world with it.
As Brian’s mother said in the Monty Python classic: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy”.
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