Many fans weren't too sure about the direction U2 was headed earlier this year and now the band seem to think they might have made a mistake with their latest release.
According to Spinner, Bono and his bandmates admitted they are disappointed by the success of their 2009 release No Line On The Horizon. Despite debuting number one in the UK in March and having sold 1 million copies, the record has been the group's biggest bust. Not only has it been their lowest-selling album in more than a decade, but the singles they have released haven't fared well on the charts either.
As
Bono stated, the band wasn't able to "
pull off the pop songs".
"We weren't really in that mindset," he said. "We felt that the album was a kind of an almost extinct species, and we should approach it in totality and create a mood and a feeling, and a beginning, middle and an end."
Bassist Adam Clayton also added music and its constantly expanding fan base is hard to appeal and certain challenges have to be dealt with.
"The commercial challenges have to be confronted," said Clayton. "But I think, in a sense, the more interesting challenge is, 'What is rock 'n' roll in this changing world?' Because, to some extent, the concept of the music fan - the concept of the person who buys music and listens to music for the pleasure of music itself - is an outdated idea."
Find out more about what U2 have to say their current success here.
Now U2 knows what it's like to be a not successful band... Life is so tough, but I think they can get over it... Well, maybe not, the album sales were so bad, and it should have been much higher at the UK charts.
- who refuses to listen to anything that isn't technically incredible, and while i respect those musicians for achieveing such a level of ability, i think he's an idiot for closing off other rich avenues of creative enjoyment. You have to respect those people who don't know what they're doing quite as well, because they're more prone to making leaps of faith and finding newer, fresher ways of writing music than those who know exactly which note should go where. On the other hand, i admit there is a sort of perverse pleasure in listening to music and knowing how it's done. 
