U2 have seen a sales spike after the release of their new album ‘Songs of Innocence’ last week.
Earlier this week, 24 of the band’s titles had reached the top 200 of the iTunes chart and singles album ‘U218’ has reached the Top 10 in 46 countries, Rolling Stone reports.
In the UK iTunes chart, 1987’s ‘The Joshua Tree’, 1991’s ‘Achtung Baby’, 1988’s ‘Rattle and Hum’, and 1984’s ‘The Unforgettable Fire’ are all in the Top 100, along with two versions of the singles collection, 1983 live album ‘Under A Blood Red Sky’, a best of collection and ‘Live From Paris’.
‘Songs of Innocence’ was released on Tuesday (September 9) at Apple’s iPhone 6 launch event and was immediately made available on iTunes with free digital copies delivered to all users. Released without any prior announcement, ‘Songs of Innocence’ is the band’s first album since 2009’s ‘No Line On The Horizon’ and was recorded with producers Danger Mouse, Flood, Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder.
“We wanted to make a very personal album,” Bono said after the record’s release. “Let’s try to figure out why we wanted to be in a band, the relationships around the band, our friendships, our lovers, our family. The whole album is first journeys – first journeys geographically, spiritually, sexually. And that’s hard. But we went there.”
‘Songs of Innocence’ can’t feature on the UK Albums Chart until its October 13 release. The Official Charts Company told NME that the album is not yet eligible as customers will not have made an “active choice” to download it.
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