If you were stunned and a little weirded out when a brand new U2 album Songs of Innocence suddenly appeared in your iTunes after the announcement of Apple's iPhone 6, worry no more. Bono has issued an official apology in the wake of the backlash.
Following the physical release of Songs of Innocence, U2 participated in a fan video Q&A on its Facebook page, where Bono finally addressed the instant arrival of a new U2 album to 500 million iTunes user.
U2 fan (or maybe hater) Harriet Marie Jobson asked the band, "Can you please never release an album on iTunes again that automatically downloads to peoples' playlists ever again? It's really rude." And, for the first time, U2 acknowledged that maybe people didn't WANT to listen to Songs of Innocence.
"Oops! I'm sorry about that. I had this beautiful idea, and we got carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing... drop of megalomania, tough of generosity, dash of self-promotion, and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into the last few years mightn't be heard," Bono said. "There's a lot of noise out there. I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it."
The general tone of the Q&A was incredibly lighthearted -- with the band sitting in a circle and laughing about how Bono and The Edge have cooler names than Adam Clayton or Larry Mullen Jr. -- so Bono's tongue-in-cheek response shouldn't necessarily be taken as a real apology.
And, according to iTunes, a lot of people were happy with a free U2 album. Over the course of the free download period, Apple reports that Songs of Innocence was streamed by 81 million users and downloaded by 26 million.
