Taylor Hawkins: U2 album sounds like a fart

Taylor Hawkins says U2's new album sounds "like a fart."

The Foo Fighters drummer compares U2’s decision to give Songs Of Innocence away free to millions of iTunes users to George Orwell’s novel 1984 and the concept of Big Brother.

U2’s controversial move saw iTunes users given the album whether they wanted it or not, with Apple later being forced to offer users a ‘removal tool’ to get rid of it. A number of stars – including Iggy Pop, Michael Sweet and Keith Nelson – slammed the Irish band for the stunt, with Hawkins the latest to wade in.

He tells Consequence Of Sound: “What happened to U2, man? I don’t think people are that hyped on them. The album is so marred by that whole sort of Orwellian 1984 extreme that it just kind of sounds like a fart any way you listen to it.

“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’

“And they thought, ‘Well that’s pretty awesome,’ but they didn’t really take into consideration the Big Brother feeling that kind of goes along with it. 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.”

Foo Fighters released their new album Sonic Highways this week. An eight-episode series of the same name is being broadcast on BBC Four and follows the band to each of the US cities in which the record was made. Dave Grohl said the experience was so demanding he would never do it again.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.