Tag: U2

Picking Five Songs From 1987

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year12 Comments

And now we’re on to 1987. This was a massive year at the top end of rock. It’s pretty crazy – the albums Hysteria, Appetite For Destruction and The Joshua Tree sold a combined 75 million copies worldwide. Two of those albums didn’t really gain steam until a year later, but that’s a different story.

Things were moving on musically in the later 1980’s. A lot of bands seemed to be chasing the brass ring and not quite grabbing it. Acts that had vital, fresh albums a few years back were now stagnating. There’s still plenty of good music to be found, but in retrospect, the signs of the coming nuclear assault of 1991 were already there by ’87.

But there’s no need for massive analysis of everything. All I really need to do is pick five songs I really like from 1987. Not necessarily my five definitive favorites, simply five of my favorites. This is a fast and loose exercise so let’s get into it.

Mötley Crüe – Wild Side

The Crüe got back to form after a bit of a letdown a few years prior. Wild Side is a heavy, pounding track that outlines the sleazier part of life. Not everything was fast women and good times in the ’80’s, there was a seedy side to things and Wild Side captured the grit and grime of the streets at night. This is one of my very favorite Crüe songs.

Guns N’ Roses – Welcome To The Jungle

1987 was the year GnR were thrust into the wider world. It would take them a bit to break, but break they did, to the tune of selling 30 million copies of Appetite For Destruction. The tune that really gets me going is the album’s opening track. It is a monster song, and much like the one from their bitter rivals above, relays how the big, bad city can swallow you whole. This threw a whole new level of intensity into the rock scene and made titans out of Guns N’ Roses.

Whitesnake – Still Of The Night

David Coverdale was not to be left out of the big winnings of 1987. Gambling his whole fortune on the album he’d just crafted, he would be paid back in spades as his album sold 10 million copies. While honestly just a song about a romp between the sheets, this is laid out with great care, featuring movements and interludes and the dynamite guitar of John Sykes. This song could be considered Whitesnake’s greatest triumph, though that’s not a question I’m here to discuss today.

U2 – Where The Streets Have No Name

U2 were big winners from 1987, bringing in a haul from their 25 million plus selling The Joshua Tree record. I’m not the band’s biggest fan but there’s no doubt that the album is a piece of work and that this song is absolutely stunning. This is simply a massive rock song packed with emotion and imagery that is too vivid to escape.

Dio – All The Fools Sailed Away

By 1987, Ronnie James Dio was operating without his wunderkid guitarist Vivian Campbell, who departed the band in acrimonious fashion. Though Dio’s “golden era” would be over, he was still capable of striking gold, as he did on this magnificent track. It’s a splendid quasi-ballad that stands alongside his prime cuts as one of his best works.

That wraps it up for 1987. Just two more years of the golden 1980’s to go, then things get really, really different – both in music and in my tastes.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

On By bigbadburchIn Controversy8 Comments

Let’s go way back in time – to 2014 and recall a fiasco that’s been making the news again due to an upcoming memoir.

The memoir in question is from Bono, the singer of U2. And the fiasco is the 2014 deployment of the U2 album Songs Of Innocence, which saw the iTunes platform distribute the album for free to all users. What seemed like a great idea to Bono turned out to be a complete shitshow, as many iTunes users flipped out over having something distributed to them without them asking. In cases where users had automatic downloads set up, the album would load on devices and even start playing without the users knowing about it until it was too late.

As it turns out, the “gift” of the U2 album wasn’t free – Apple actually paid U2 for it. And all of this was at the suggestion of Bono. This Ultimate Classic Rock article outlines what Bono stated in his book about the incident – he pitched the idea to Tim Cook, who was against the concept of giving away music. Somehow, Bono got Cook to agree to actually buy the album from U2 and then send it out to all users for distribution. It’s not certain exactly how much Apple paid for the album but that was a clever idea on Bono’s part to pocket a bit of cash out of the deal.

The album’s release did not go over well. People were mad – some were upset purely at the thought of having a U2 album on their devices at all. Others hit on what was the likely core of the issue – the idea of tech companies just pushing out whatever they want to their users. While the U2 album may not have been a massive breach of privacy by big tech compared to other stuff, it did raise flags with many people.

Artists were also unhappy about the push – they felt that the album distribution devalued music. It was the same argument Tim Cook initially made. It’s an interesting thing to look at, especially in the wake of streaming taking over the concept of buying digital music. It was a big argument at the time, but the idea of the digital marketplace was about to be obsolete anyway.

In retrospect, Bono has used the opportunity afforded in his memoir to take responsibility for the album snafu. While greater sins have been committed for sure, this didn’t wind up being good PR for U2 or Apple when it happened. I doubt Bono’s contrition really matters much in the end, the issue is eight years old now and a lot has happened since then, but it’s cool he can own up to it.

And it’s worth noting that not everyone was mad about it – plenty of people gladly took the freebie, and over the years people have told stories of getting new Apple devices and playing the only thing in their libraries, which was this album. There was some measure of success in the distribution method.

For me personally the U2 album wasn’t a big deal. I think the band’s ’80’s stuff is cool and all but I’m not really a true fan of the band and I haven’t listened to them in a dog’s age. I did use iTunes at the time and I simply left it in my library, not downloaded to my PC or iPod. In truth I have never listened to anything on the album until I played the video for the song posted below, which was about ten minutes before writing this post.

I do understand why people had reservations about a tech company pushing stuff on people like that. But it really wasn’t my battle. On a scale of things that have happened before and since with “big tech,” the U2 album doesn’t move the needle for me. At worst, some people had an album they didn’t know or want auto-play and scare them.

It was fun to see this controversy pop up in the news again. I honestly hadn’t thought about it since it happened, and recalling the angst over the promotion is pretty cool. It’s a nothing burger in the end, at least to me, but it sure did get people stirred up.

Bono’s memoir Surrender – 40 Songs, One Story releases Tuesday, November 1st.