U2 have dropped their new album, Songs Of Innocence, and it’s free until the end of the week – for iTunes customers! Given the synchronicity with the release of new Apple products the genius of this marketing move will soon be apparent.

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The lead off single from the album and its opening track, ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)’ is very much in the familiar U2 anthemic mould – strident guitar from The Edge and a powerful hook that will have fans singing along in stadiums all around the world when the band set on their next tour. It is pretty much irresistible – and given that this is first taste of U2 in more than five years, fans will be salivating.

Listen a little more closely, however, and – like some other songs on the album – there is a deeper meaning. “I was young, not dumb/Just wishing to be blinded/By you, brand new/And we were pilgrims on our way” sings Bono in tribute to the late lead singer of The Ramones, whom he acknowledges as one of his early influences.

It is not only ironic that the biggest rock band in the world is saluting a New York band that hardly dented the charts but had an influence far beyond their sales figures but that U2 performed at the Apple launch yesterday. Joey Ramone is probably up there smiling!

Pre-order the new biography, U2: The Definitive Biography by John Jobling. Pre-order here.

Sure to inspire debate with every music lover, U2: The Definitive Biography humanizes the band and paints an honest picture of a band's rise to the top, plunging into the heart and underlying soul of this iconic rock and roll band.