Let me just shed some light here on the US with both songs, U2's and Apple's combined early promotions / successes, and the Billboard music charts.

Before the I-Phone and the I-Pad, the big Apple product was the I-Pod / I-Tunes. This product is what really put Apple back on the map. When they rolled this out, they truly promoted the shit out of it. They used Vertigo which was the newest single from U2 at that time. They even had a special i-pod made to resemble the color scheme of their newest album. Attached below is the log version of the commercial that was played constantly.


The constant airplay of this commercial, catapulted the single, which then catapulted the album. I believe the album sold a million copies within it's first week here in the US which was not as common anymore during those times.

What used to drive the Billboard charts were 'Single' sales in combination with radio air-play. Obviously during these times, I-tunes wasn't even a consideration just yet. This was just the beginning for them. Also illegal downloading using media such as Napster was big for downloading individual songs... Downloading a full, new album wasn't as common just yet. So because of this as well as other things too, people weren't buying 'singles' anymore. You could have a huge hit with constant radio play and only chart at 33 because you are missing the 'single' sales... The radio companies made shit off singles anyway so now the main purpose of the single was to promote the album when prior, it was made to do both. Back when albums were good, people would buy 4 or 5 singles, then say F it, and buy the entire album because entire albums were made so good.

Once you add all this together, U2's and Apple's promotion was the perfect storm and they really got the current music scene right. It looks like they are trying to work together, 10 years later, to capture that magic once again.

In my opinion, U2 isn't as current as they were 10 years ago. Vertigo was a great catchy, almost made for a commercial type of song as opposed to this newest single. And I think this logic is just stupid.

As far as Who Say goes... It was the second single off of HAND. It opened doors for a new country artist Jennifer Nettles and Sugarland but more so added a whole other element of fans to the song. Who Says was a Jennifer Nettles hit amongst county fans, not Bon Jovi. And Jon should have recognized that and left it as that instead of doing Lost Highway. However, lets give credit where credit is due. Jon and Richie wrote a great song, got the perfect person to sing on it (unfortunately, we've all heard the Keith Urban Version) which then opened doors for a whole other market. Perfect!

The song by itself, sung buy Jon, wouldn't have done much better than HAND.