U2 singer Bono revealed on the BBC One’s “Graham Norton Show” that the reason he always wears his trademark wraparound sunglasses is because he’s been fighting glaucoma for the past 20 years. Glaucoma is caused by a pressure build-up in the eye that results in the eye being sensitive to light. It can lead to blindness if left untreated.
The news comes after U2’s new album, “Songs of Innocence,” flopped. The album was initially downloaded onto the systems of 500 million Apple subscribers, causing considerable controversy only with the public but with other recording artists such as Iggy Pop and Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, who told the Seattle Times that U2 “devalued their music completely.”
The free album download deal has expired and the band has since put it on sale at the usual outlets, but Noise 11 reports that in all of Australia only 39 people paid to download the album last week. The number of albums sold there was only 2,820, while in Britain, the album debuted at No. 6 — not bad, but still not enough for the longtime band. “Songs of Innocence” is the worst debut showing from U2 in 31 years, since “War” was released in 1983.
In the United States, when the new weekly Top 200 album chart is released on Wednesday, Billboard estimates that the album will make the Top 10, but will only sell a maximum of around 25,000 copies, which well under normal for the band.
Obits: Manhattan Transfer founder Tim Hauser, reggae’s John Holt
Tim Hauser, a L.A. resident who founded jazzy lounge act The Manhattan Transfer in New York City in 1969, suffered a fatal heart at age 72 in a hospital in Sayre, Penn., reports CBS News. The 10-time Grammy Award-winning group ranked on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart 16 times from 1971-1994. Hauser, who sang bass and baritone, sang with the two versions of the group through its history (1969-71 and 1973-2013) and performed with them through the end of last year.
Jamaican singer-songwriter John Holt, a member of 1960s Kingston ska group The Paragons, died of unknown causes in a London hospital at age 67, three months after performing at the One Love Festival in Milton Keynes, north of London. Holt is best known for writing “The Tide is High,” that was a No. 1 smash in the U.S. and U.K. for Blondie in 1980, and which the British girl group Atomic Kitten took to the top of the British singles chart in 2002.
New Releases
Among the recently released albums, digital reissues, MP3 downloads and box sets are “Melody Road,” the 32nd studio album in 48 years and first in four years from 73-year-old Neil Diamond, who composed the CD’s dozen songs; and “Hope” is the sixth album in five years from British TV talent show winner Susan Boyle and she covers ten songs, including Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” John Lennon’s “Imagine,” The Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day,” and yes, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” “Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics” is the 38th studio album since 1956 from the 72-year-old Detroit soul diva Rolling Stone ranked No. 1 on its 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, and she covers Streisand’s “People,” Gladys Knight’s’ “Midnight Train to Georgia,” Diana Ross and The Supreme’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” and Prince’s “Nothing Compares to You” that was a hit for Irish singer Sinead O’Connor; and “Nostalgia, the sixth solo album in 22 years from former Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox, OBE, sees her covering a dozen tunes from the 1930s-’50s, including George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” and Billie Holliday’s “God Bless the Child.”
The 11-track “Kings & Queens of the Underground,” produced by Yes & The Buggles’ producer/keyboardist Trevor Horn, is snarling 58-year-old English punk Billy Idol’s sixth solo album in 32 years; “Live in Englishtown Nj Sept. 3, 1977,” from Southern rock vets The Marshall Tucker Band sees them cover ten songs, including their debut hit from 1973, “Can’t You See”; and “Home for the Holidays” from sometime Hootie & The Blowfish leader Hootie himself, aka country star Darius Rucker that includes “Winter Wonderland,” “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful” and “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”
Steve Smith writes a new Classic Pop, Rock and Country Music News column every week. Contact him by email at Classicpopmusicnews@gmail.com.
