Free me from free U2

Like many peoples of the internot, I awoke earlier this week to find that someone had laid a turd in my iTunes. Lightweight and beige, it taunted me. Naturally, I was aghast. I railed against those responsible. 'U2, Brute??' I railed. Actually I didn't, because that would presuppose a level of wit and composure which I failed to retain on learning Bono had laid a cable in my music collection, one so foetidly heinous it needed special equipment to remove it. It was more akin to a furious declaration of 'YOU FUCKING WANK-SUNGLASSED PONTIFICATING SHIT-MUSIC-WRITING PROFESSIONAL IRISH CUNT' as I selected-all and deleted-all.

 

The most interesting response to U2's originally-shelved new album Songs of Indifference (wait, that was that other professional Irish cunt wasn't it) being force-fed to millions of iTunes users worldwide has been that of diehard U2 fans, and old people, many of whom are diehard U2 fans, because U2 are old and so are they. Truly, there is nowt more punishing than a diehard U2 fan. You know them. They are in your life. They are not in your life because they are diehard U2 fans, but in spite of that. The position of the U2 lifers, almost exclusively old white guys like Bill Simmons, is that in 1991 they had to line up outside fucking Brashs for an hour to buy the CD of Achtung Baby so everyone should just be grateful to have this manna from heaven bestowed upon them gratis. Indeed, the concept of complaining about something given for free seems to be a recurring theme in the old-white-guy backlash-to-the-backlash.

That's not the point. Even old white guys who listen to U2 are precious about their music collections. You wouldn't have been received politely had you wandered into their lounge room and crammed Bros or Milli Vanilli in between their first-press LPs of War and The Joshua Tree. Or even their albums, which admittedly would be easier to organise. People's music is personal as fuck, and that's no less the case now that said music is archived electronically. It is still how people see themselves, how they think of themselves, how they judge each other, how they catalogue their memories, mark milestones in their lives. They don't embrace the invasion of finding the forty odd minutes of offcuts and shite that is Songs of Inconsequence bobbing in the bowl first thing in the morning. Noone under 30 wants that. Not that many over 30 want that either. If this has taught Apple anything, it is surely this: Do not fuck with people's shit. Do not.

Though it's not as though it's the first time U2 have been involved in these sorts of shenanigans.

The saddest part, even as a non-diehard, is to see how far U2 have fallen. U2 once were warriors. There was a period there when they were the biggest band in the world. Aside from releasing genuinely great albums in the late 80s and early 90s, the ZooTV and PopMart world tours and concert videos defined live stadium acts through their decade. U2 built a reputation, and still trade on, the force and fury of their live show. Which is good, because they ain't releasing another studio album. Ironically, given the cyclical nature of music, in an era where bands like Foals are coining it in based on a sound lightly lifted from early-doors U2, the band themselves will never be able to release a new, original-release album again with any expectation of people being willing to pay real actual money for it. Apart from those old-white-guy diehards - who probably would have been willing to pay real actual money for Songs of Incontinence anyway.

So RIP in peas, U2. 36 years, and this is what does them in. Not The Unforgettable Fire, but The Unflushable Floater.

The Doctor is OUT.