This might be generational. Through the ‘80s and into the early ‘90s, they were the Biggest Thing Going* in rock music, and they had a huge army of rabid fans, and Bono was preaching about whatever dumb shit pet causes he had, so he was influential.
Then grunge came, no one gave a shit about anything new that U2 put out because their style instantly became dated, the band kind of coasted on the momentum of their old songs and the fans they had already accumulated, but now enough time has passed that they’re beyond irrelevant, and like you said, people have to be forced to download their albums.
*To be fair, I don’t know why they were the Biggest Thing Going, because even then they were mediocre at best and extremely pompous. If I had to guess, they sucked a lot of dick for their music industry overlords.
Yeah, you had to be there. The earliest thing I remember hearing when it came out from them was Joshua Tree, but then in order to stay relevant, they basically reinvented themselves as 'the biggest rock stars in the world' with Achtung Baby and Zooropa, Bono being Biggest Rock Star of Them All.
Achtung Baby was actually the first album I remember being released on CD in a Digipak case. Fuck those things, they were garbage.
That said, U2 were actually smart in that they figured out early that mp3 and streaming would eventually take over and worked it into their contracts in the mid 90s which is pretty forward thinking.
This might be generational. Through the ‘80s and into the early ‘90s, they were the Biggest Thing Going* in rock music, and they had a huge army of rabid fans, and Bono was preaching about whatever dumb shit pet causes he had, so he was influential.
Then grunge came, no one gave a shit about anything new that U2 put out because their style instantly became dated, the band kind of coasted on the momentum of their old songs and the fans they had already accumulated, but now enough time has passed that they’re beyond irrelevant, and like you said, people have to be forced to download their albums.
*To be fair, I don’t know why they were the Biggest Thing Going, because even then they were mediocre at best and extremely pompous. If I had to guess, they sucked a lot of dick for their music industry overlords.
Yeah, you had to be there. The earliest thing I remember hearing when it came out from them was Joshua Tree, but then in order to stay relevant, they basically reinvented themselves as 'the biggest rock stars in the world' with Achtung Baby and Zooropa, Bono being Biggest Rock Star of Them All.
Achtung Baby was actually the first album I remember being released on CD in a Digipak case. Fuck those things, they were garbage.
That said, U2 were actually smart in that they figured out early that mp3 and streaming would eventually take over and worked it into their contracts in the mid 90s which is pretty forward thinking.