{"id":1698,"date":"2009-02-14T10:04:03","date_gmt":"2009-02-14T18:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=1698"},"modified":"2009-02-14T10:06:35","modified_gmt":"2009-02-14T18:06:35","slug":"no-line-on-the-horizon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/14\/no-line-on-the-horizon\/","title":{"rendered":"No Line On The Horizon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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No Line On The Horizon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Am I the only one who hears "Heart Of Glass" here?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that Blondie song was more memorable.<\/p>\n

The verse of this track sucks.\u00c2\u00a0 The chorus is better than anything in "Get On Your Boots", and that is good.<\/p>\n

But the reason I focus on U2 is because of the collision of the old paradigm with the new, through the lens of a band that needs to be number one.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you be number one still?\u00c2\u00a0 Or do you have to give up on that goal?<\/p>\n

Rather than create a new "Enter Sandman", Metallica went back to its roots and made music in the vein of "Master Of Puppets".\u00c2\u00a0 End result?\u00c2\u00a0 No Top Forty breakthrough, but incredibly satiated fans.\u00c2\u00a0 My source says "Death Magnetic" will end up being the second best-selling Metallica album EVER!\u00c2\u00a0 This in an era where album sales have been halved from their peak.<\/p>\n

How did Metallica do it?\u00c2\u00a0 By changing the formula.\u00c2\u00a0 Working with a new producer, who brought fresh ideas, who pushed the band to its limits.\u00c2\u00a0 Rick coddled Metallica a bit, but mostly he kept telling the band they needed more.<\/p>\n

Did U2 need more?<\/p>\n

Metallica was all about the set-up.\u00c2\u00a0 Realizing they came down on the wrong side of Napster, that despite music needing to be paid for history was moving in the other direction, Metallica gave away all kinds of material, and allowed fans to buy in at a zillion different levels, with all kinds of products.\u00c2\u00a0 Metallica realized it was 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 U2 seems to think it’s still 1992.<\/p>\n

It’s not about the mass play.\u00c2\u00a0 Not about spraying bullets in every direction, but targeting your audience, the people who care.\u00c2\u00a0 Bruce Springsteen is projected to sell 50-55,000 albums next week (thanks "Hits"!), which will still leave him shy of gold.\u00c2\u00a0 Will "Working On A Dream" even get to gold?\u00c2\u00a0 There was massive publicity, but it didn’t move the masses to lay down their cash.<\/p>\n

U2 should stop trying to be the biggest band in the world and just BE the biggest band in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 The Stones could say they were the world’s greatest rock and roll band when there were comparatively few acts out there and everybody was paying attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Now every Mac comes with GarageBand and even kids record music, when they’re not busy playing videogames.\u00c2\u00a0 The key isn’t to let everybody know you’ve got a new album out, but to inform your core, to satiate your core, and then they won’t stop talking about your new work.<\/p>\n

The core isn’t talking about "Working On A Dream".\u00c2\u00a0 Word is not spreading from the center.\u00c2\u00a0 And the rest of the world is more concerned with that inane insane woman who just had eight babies and the doctor with the lame in vitro track record who implanted her.<\/p>\n

Train-wreck used to work.\u00c2\u00a0 To the degree it still works, it’s momentary.\u00c2\u00a0 If Kelly Clarkson has a hit single, we’re interested. If not, she loses almost her entire audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas a band with cred can tour even if it doesn’t have a new album.<\/p>\n

I’m flummoxed by these two U2 tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re just not…good enough.\u00c2\u00a0 And just not off the wall enough to be seen as experimentation.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s okay to experiment, it’s okay to fail.\u00c2\u00a0 But not if you need to succeed.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s an air of desperation coming from the U2 camp.\u00c2\u00a0 Which does not draw people to you.<\/p>\n

We’re drawn to the dark and sinister, the different, what’s underground.\u00c2\u00a0 The mainstream ruled in the MTV era, from 1981-2000.\u00c2\u00a0 But we’ve seen a splintering of the audience worse than the one in the late sixties, when free-form FM started making inroads into AM’s audience.<\/p>\n

And now radio is a backwater.<\/p>\n

You listen to this new track.\u00c2\u00a0 You tell me.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Line On The Horizon Am I the only one who hears "Heart Of Glass" here? Unfortunately, that Blondie song was more memorable. The verse of this track sucks.\u00c2\u00a0 The chorus is better than anything in "Get On Your Boots", and that is good. But the reason I focus on U2 is because of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-ro","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1700,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions\/1700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}