10 Albums That Were Released Completely By Surprise

Ever since the days of Achtung Baby, U2 always were willing to experiment with the way that you release your album. After becoming one of the biggest bands in the world, they had understood the power of keeping your audience in the dark about some aspects of your record, like unveiling new aesthetics like the Fly or sending a message of hope on albums like All That You Can't Leave Behind. It's one thing to keep your audience hungry for more, but something else entirely to give them what they want without asking.

Around the time that Apple was blowing up, Songs of Innocence was made almost as a way of partnering with Apple to make a lot of money. While U2 had worked with Apple to promote the iPod before, this was the moment where things started to get a little too uncomfortable for some fans to deal with, since anyone who had an iTunes account had this album shoved into their music library whether they wanted to or not.

Though the album did make a lot of money on its first day alone, it did nothing to endear U2 to some of the fairweather fans, seeing this as just another marketing move and painting Bono as one of the most arrogant frontmen in the music industry. You can never assume that everyone will want to hear your music, but as far as technology is concerned, this is certainly Big Brother's favorite U2 album by a mile.