Even U2 is copying Beyoncé now. The Irish rock gods just took a page out of the Texan R&B goddess' book and surprised about a half a billion iTunes customers with a free copy of their new album, "Songs of Innocence," which won't be formally released until Oct. 14.
U2 performed the lead-off track and first single, "The Miracle of Joey Ramone," in front of a bunch of tech geeks at Apple's big product launch event in Cupertino, Calif., where the iPhone 6 was also birthed with U2-worthy showmanship. Apple announced that the album would be available for download to iTunes customers through Oct. 13, billing it as the biggest simultaneous album release of all time. Check your iTunes queue; it's probably already there.
To entice fans into still buying a physical copy of the album starting Oct. 14, U2 will also release a deluxe edition of "Songs of Innocence" with four bonus songs plus some acoustic versions of songs on the main album. It's unclear if the plain white album sleeve being used for art work will be the actual cover of the record. Their last album was 2009's critically lauded but commercially disappointing "No Line on the Horizon."
Rolling Stone got the first chat with Bono about the new disc, which you can read here.
