Apparently, a CD containing new, unreleased songs from U2‘s new upcoming album was stolen during a photo shoot:
“A large slice of two years work lifted via a piece of round plastic. It doesn’t seem credible but that’s what’s just happened to us… and it was my CD,” guitarist Edge told the band’s official Web site.
Edge’s complete comments are here, but in a move that somehow just reeks of U2 arrogance, you can’t view the page in Mozilla in anything but Internet Explorer.
Edge is right. To me this whole story doesn’t seem credible at all, and it almost smacks of publicity stunt or, as paranoid as it may seem, some kind of attempt to “lose” unfinished work and release it on P2P networks to gain publicity and have a safety net to blame the pirates if this album doesn’t sell. A far fetched theory? Perhaps. But consider the following:
1. Why would veteran rockers – who have been around the block and would reasonably know the importance of guarding your unfinished, unreleased works carefully – such as U2 do such a amatuerish, stupid thing like put that unfinished, unreleased work on a CD, and then bring that CD to a photo shoot, of all things? If you’re working on something, and millions of fans want to hear it right now, and you’re fully aware of the piracy threat, then you just do not go traipsing around with an easily-stealable, easily rippable disc unless you want it to be stolen!
2. Let’s just entertain the notion – for a moment, but no longer than that – that Edge was evaluating the group’s work via that CD, say he was listening to it on the way to the photo shoot [*chortle*]. Why burn a CD and carry it with you? A CD, as any audiophile worth their salt would know, isn’t perfect and loses a lot of the fullness of sound without proper editing to compensate (and even then it still isn’t as perfect as can be). So unless the editing and production was pretty damn close to finished, that CD would likely sound like shit, and not just because U2 is a washed up band whose talent is about dried up. And if the editing and production were close to finished, then all the more reason to suspect this little incident as staged! See #1 for the reason why.
Maybe U2 really are that stupid, but I really doubt I’m giving them more credit than they’re due. I really think this is a publicity stunt, and if the CD was in fact stolen, I’m hazarding a guess that it might’ve been left out for someone to “steal” on purpose.
And if they really are that stupid to bring a CD of their work pre-release to a publicity event where quite a few people they don’t know are hanging around and could just grab it, then maybe they got what they deserved.