I don't think general public opinion of Bono is really that high and I do think that has an effect on sales.

I think a bunch of things are working against U2. Their age for starters. Their fan base is people mostly in 50-60s who buy/stream less. They are constantly doing massive tours with tons of media coverage. I think all the press and in your face antics by Bono tend to grate people.

By spreading themselves so thin by trying to capture every audience, they’re sinking without a trace. They had a hardcore section of fans who followed their every move, readying themselves for forward thinking ambitious and/or experimental albums. If they had never lost their nerve in being adventurous, then they wouldn’t have lost their core audience. One summary from some fans summed it up. They said that Bono had stopped writing in poetry and started writing in prose, and had changed from writing deep and meaningful lyrics to naively optimistic songs (comparing debut singles, there’s a huge drop off from ‘every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, all kill their inspiration and sing about their grief’’ to the uber-bland ‘you’re the best thing about me, the best thing that ever happened a boy’). Add to this that The Edge stopped creating evocative soundscapes and great arpeggiated rhythms and started to write generic riffs and you’ve got a band that many see as bland.

No Line was the last album to show an element of creativity at the very start and very end but the entire middle section is an absolute catastrophe that does not need to be heard. It’s sad that they fail to realise that album’s failure wasn’t due to a lack of hits but simply down to desperately poor generic songwriting in the middle that tried to be chart worthy (throw in Breathe too; while there is a good song there - the unheard more mystical version is one of Brian Eno’s favourite U2 songs ever - is absolutely destroyed by ‘rawk’ production courtesy of Lillywhite who should have ended his partnership with the band years ago). The generic route is sadly the path they’ve taken since then.

i think it´ll sell around 25k or below. Pink is at #5 on Monday´s update and sold 13,2k. But, yes, in Christmas period you should sell a bit more. Liam sold 9,7k in his 7 week and 14k last week. We´ll see...

But this album is gonna struggle for reaching platinum status.

Not sure posters in here can make their mind up -
Great sales, Noel is 50 now, yeah mega
Has a made up very specific record of 10 something's charting somewhere - hero!
Didn't expect it to chart heavily
Noel is after critical acclaim these days not sales (the single biggest load of bollocks ever posted about Noel)

It's like a online Little Britain, Yeah but (insert excuse here and blindly carry on)

Agreed. After 'All That Your Can't Leave Behind' in 2000 they should of stopped making albums. Do other things individually and then re-group every few years for the mega tours of hits with maybe 1 new recorded track to download/stream for each tour. No shame in it, that body of work up to 2000 was epic.

There still looking like topping the billboard charts.

Holy Mountain at #51 in mid week update. Bound for high 70s or low 80s.

I think he's saying that people are making excuses for Noel selling badly, which is weird because Noel didn't sell badly at all and no-one is making excuses for it because it didn't happen. Again, I'm reading some absolute shite from someone with less than 100 posts. 

This, or Twitter trolls who didn't know what Beady Eye was until six months ago. These are the post truth times we live in.

If there was a few people who were throughly fucked off and disgruntled by how some people treated the Beady Eye section as a dumping ground (couple of them have liked your post unsurprisingly) it would hardly be a surprise.

They can dish it out of course...