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Artist News Releases Retail
U2 release album early because they believe they deserve awards
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 1 October 2014
Still in the mood for surprises, U2 have quietly released their new album, ‘Songs Of Innocence’, on vinyl two weeks ahead of its official release date. This time not as a gift to the world though, rather because they feel the album should be given a Grammy Award (perhaps several Grammy Awards) and the release date cut off for eligible albums was yesterday.
According to Rolling Stone, a small number of vinyl copies of the album were made available in US record shops this week, ensuring that Grammy judges will have to consider the record for inclusion in the prize giving ceremony next February. So, bad luck Grammy judges who thought they’d cleverly removed it from their lives already.
A spokesperson for the awards explained: “As long as the album, be it CD, vinyl or digital, is available commercially for sale to the public by our eligibility cut off date at a nationally recognised retailer or website, then it’s eligible for consideration”.
In case you were wondering, the Grammy powers that be decided to render the free giveaway of the album to iTunes’ 500 million users an ineligible release method for the album to be considered for their awards. Hence having to put out a few LPs. Similarly, ‘Songs Of Innocence’ has not appeared in the charts yet because you can’t just give loads of people your album for nothing and then claim to be popular.
