'Sounds Like a Fart': Foo Fighters Diss New U2 Album

In an interview with Australia’s themusic.com published last weekend, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins slammed U2’s new album, Songs of Innocence, comparing the album’s controversial instant iTunes rollout to George Orwell’s 1984 and saying there wasn’t “anything great” on it.

“I mean, I think they probably thought it was gonna be a great idea, like ‘Here’s the deal: everybody who has an iPhone gets your record. And they get it for free!'” Hawkins told the site. “And they thought, probably, ‘Well, that’s pretty awesome!’ but they didn’t take into consideration the Big Brother feeling that kinda goes along with like ‘[In menacing voice] You have the new U2 record’… 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.”

“What happened to U2, man?” Hawkins continued. “I don’t think people are that hyped on them. I don’t know that any of that new album has anything great on it. I listened to it once, but it’s so marred by that sort of, like I said, Orwellian 1984 extreme that it just kinda sounds like a fart any way you listen to it.”

U2’s album, Songs of Innocence, was automatically delivered to the more than half billion iTunes users worldwide in early September, thanks to a partnership between the Irish rock band and Apple. The move drew widespread condemnation from those who felt the band had “sold out,” including Ozzy Osbourne’s wife.

Apple was ultimately forced to issue a small app that allowed iTunes users to delete the album from their accounts. U2 lead singer Bono apologized for the automatic album drop in October, saying the band “might have got carried away with ourselves.”