81 MILLION HEAR NEW U2 ALBUM

U2 REVEAL CONTROVERSIAL ALBUM SLEEVE FOR 'SONGS OF INNOCENCE' 1

Apple say that a total of 81 million people have “experienced” ‘Songs Of Innocence’, by either downloading some of its songs or streaming them. Vice-President Eddy Cue told Billboard: “To help put this into perspective, prior to this, 14 million customers had purchased U2 music since the iTunes store opened in 2003.”

This figure makes ‘Songs Of Innocence’ rank in the Top 40 best-selling albums of all-time, in joint 32nd place alongside Britney Spears’ 1999 album ‘…Baby One More Time’. The best-selling album ever is Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’, which has sold an estimated 60 million copies since its release in 1982.

Monday (October 13) sees the release of an expanded version of the album, featuring an extra 10 songs: new tracks ‘Lucifer’s Hands’ and ‘The Crystal Ballroom’, a Tchad Blake remix of ‘Sleep Like A Baby Tonight’, an alternative version of ‘The Troubles’ and six acoustic versions of ‘Songs Of Innocence’ tracks.

U2 have previously revealed that they hope to shortly release a companion album, ‘Songs Of Experience’. In a new interview, Bono told The Sun: “When the second album is out, the first will take on whole new proportions. There’s a lot of cross-talk between the older singer on ‘Songs Of Experience’ and the younger singer of ‘Songs Of Innocence’. It gets really interesting.”

Bono added that he doesn’t approve of Britain’s attitude of “eating its own” successful artists. He said: “Mumford and Sons are not well-regarded in the UK. In America, they are. They’re unarguably great songwriters and performers. The UK’s got to stop eating its own. Stick to eating the Irish, because we can take it.”

Listen to Dave Fanning interview Bono BELOW:

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Xsnoize Author
Mark Millar is the founder of XS Noize and looks after the daily running of the website as well as hosting interviews for the weekly XS Noize Podcast. Mark's favourite album is Achtung Baby by U2.

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