wax&wires

Is It U2, Or Just The Economy?

It’s no surprise that U2′s new album, No Line On The Horizon rocketed to number one after its first week on store shelves, selling 484,000 copies. That means that No Line is U2′s second-strongest U.S. debut, falling behind How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, which sold 840,000 copies in its first week. To keep it in perspective, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, which I thought was a far superior album than How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (so much so that they still play Beautiful Day when promoting their current album), sold about 428,000 copies during it’s first week out back in 2000.

With all that taken into account, think back to one of 2008′s most celebrated albums, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, which sold a staggering 721,207 copies its first week on the market last June. So why did the undisputed biggest band in the world, U2, fall so far behind their chums from across the pond? Some might blame the economy, as entertainment is easily the first thing cut from budgets in hard times and we’ve seen the sharpest edge of the recession thus far between the two album’s releases. Others would blame UMG’s Austrailian division for leaking U2′s album early, causing a flurry of U2 fans to rush to their nearest torrent host to get a sneak peak. Many would cite that CD sales have been on the decline with each passing year, so a the biggest album of 2009 will undoubtedly sell less than the biggest album of 2008.

Could it be simply be that Coldplay has usurped U2 as the biggest band in the world? Are album sales a fair indicator as to a band’s complete success, or is there something unspoken that makes the great bands great? As far as media presence and legacy, the clear answer would be that U2 has maintained their throne. We didn’t see Coldplay on Letterman for a week straight, playing a live concert on GMA, or even shifting people’s faith to the degree that Bono does. All Coldplay had was a little iTunes commercial and a slew of controversy over their hit single, but that seemed to be enough to yield nearly 300,000 more album sales. Maybe it’s Apple. Let’s not forget that the biggest selling album by U2 in their first week, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, was featured in a similar iTunes commercial to Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, and released along with a custom U2 iPod and the like. This album had a lot of other hype, but no iTunes commercial. Obviously, that could be nothing more than a coincidence, but it does beg the question as to what type of media saturation is most effective.

So what gives? What makes a great band, is it album sales, ticket sales, social significance?

Your turn:

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 3:59 pm. It is filed under wax and tagged with album sales, charts, economy, u2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.