U2's Songs of Innocence stunt didn't sit well with thousands of people.
When the iconic Irish band beamed their new album into millions of Apple accounts, there was so much backlash that the company actually created an app to remove it from users' clouds.
The outrage was funny (unless you were one of the angered souls), and even some of pop culture's elite got dragged into the fray. Bono apologized and then unapologized. Much ado about a free album, we say.
Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins gave the album a listen, but he found the marketing strategy too distracting to overcome.
"I mean, I think they probably thought it was gonna be a great idea, 'Here's the deal: everybody who has an iPhone, gets your record. And they get it for free!'" Hawkins told Australia's The Music (via Stereogum). "And they thought, probably, 'Well that's pretty awesome!' but they didn't really take into consideration the Big Brother feeling that kinda goes along with like, '[In menacing voice] You have the new U2 record'... You couldn't get rid of it and they actually had to come up with an app to get rid of it, that's horrible.
"I liked all the YouTube footage of all the crap: 'What the f--- is this s--- doin' on my phone, dog? Get this s--- off my phone, dog!' Haha, it was like, HAHAHAHAhahaha."
Hawkins lamented the uncool nature of U2's product.
"What happened to U2, man?" he said. "I don't think people are that hyped on them... I don't know that any of that new album has anything great on it. I listened to it once, but it's so marred by that whole sort of, like I said, Orwellian, 1984 extreme that it just kinda sounds like a fart any way you listen to it."
The Foo Fighters released their apparently non-Orwellian project, Sonic Highways, today (Nov. 10). Check out "Something From Nothing" below:
