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Remember U2’s 2014 album Songs of Innocence? If you owned an iPad or iPhone back around the time that the album was released you will never forget it.
Not because it was one of U2’s greatest albums. In fact, it really wasn’t all that great, spending only nine weeks on the UK Albums Chart and eight weeks on the American Billboard 200.
What most people remember Songs of Innocence for is that it automatically appeared in their iPhone or iPad’s music libraray. It was made even worse if you had automatic music downloads enabled and weren’t a fan of the band.
The Washington Post called it “rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail.” Slate was upset that “that “consent and interest are no longer a requisite for owning an album.” Wired called it “nothing more than spam.”
So many people complained that Apple felt the need to create a special page on their website (itunes.com/soi-remove) specifically to explain to users how to delete the album from their music library.
Eight years later, people still haven’t forgotten, and neither has U2’s lead singer Bono
As part of a extremely lengthy excerpt from his memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, which appeared in the Guardian this past weekend, Bono once again apologized.
“If just getting our music to people who like our music was the idea, that was a good idea,” Bono writes. “But if the idea was getting our music to people who might not have had a remote interest in our music, maybe there might be some pushback. But what was the worst that could happen? It would be like junk mail. Wouldn’t it? Like taking our bottle of milk and leaving it on the doorstep of every house in the neighborhood.
“Not. Quite. True.
“On 9 September 2014, we didn’t just put our bottle of milk at the door but in every fridge in every house in town,” he continued. “In some cases we poured it on to the good people’s cornflakes. And some people like to pour their own milk. And others are lactose intolerant.
“I take full responsibility. Not Guy O, not Edge, not Adam, not Larry, not Tim Cook, not Eddy Cue. I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it. Not quite. As one social media wisecracker put it, Woke up this morning to find Bono in my kitchen, drinking my coffee, wearing my dressing gown, reading my paper. Or, less kind, The free U2 album is overpriced. Mea culpa.”