Achtung, Baby! New U2 Release SetNov. 23 is going to be a beautiful day for U2 fans.
Bono and the boys have announced plans to release their still untitled album in the U.S. then, a day after it drops in the U.K. The first single, "Vertigo," will hit radio on Sept. 24, while a video for the song will debut in October.
U2's 11th studio album, produced by Steve Lillywhite, is the follow-up to their multiple Grammy-winning 2000 disc, All That You Can Leave Behind. Besides "Vertigo," other song titles rumored to be on the Irish rockers' set include "Tough" and "Full Metal Jacket."
The band has been previewing tracks to select music industry types, and the buzz has been tremendous. Time magazine's Josh Tyrangiel says the new CD "is just full of confident, expansive guitar rock from the masters of the form. All the old tricks--the Edge's echoing guitar notes,Larry Mullen Jr.'s martial snare--still work...[Bono] has enormous assuredness, and the occasional cracks in his voice make the bad-relationship songs (and, as always, there are quite a few) darker and more dramatic."
U2 fan site @U2 quotes VH1 Senior Vice President Bill Flanagan saying, "It's the best album they have ever done. It's going to knock [listeners] out." And British rock writer Neil McCormick tells Hot Press magazine that "Vertigo" "is like the early U2 pumped up in the 21st century, a really exciting record."
The album's release will apparently not be impacted by the disappearance of early version of the album. A compact disc containing unmixed versions of the tracks went missing from a recording studio in Nice, France, in July, prompting worries that the songs could be leaked to the Internet, potentially costing the quartet, arguably the most popular rock band in the world, and its label, Interscope, millions in lost revenue.
With French investigators still not finding what they're looking for, Bono told London's Daily Telegraph that the group may try and head off such a disastrous leak by making the album available early as a legal download on Apple's iTunes should file-swappers get their hands on it.
"If it is on the Internet this week, we will release it immediately as a legal download on iTunes, and get hard copies into the shops by the end of the month," the singer said. "It would be a real pity. It would screw up years of work and months of planning, not to mention f--king up our holidays. But once it's out. It's out."
A cursory scan of the major music-swapping sites haven't turned up any of the MIA tracks.
For now, the album will be on shelves--and iTunes--in November, with a U.S. tour slated for the spring.
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(And yes, although I'm a casual fan of U2, this thread is little more than an opportunity to mock this
thread from our buddy Durge from just a couple months ago. . .
