{"id":30547,"date":"2020-10-27T17:09:30","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T21:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=30547"},"modified":"2025-09-29T11:27:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T15:27:18","slug":"unkillable-songs-of-innocence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/27\/unkillable-songs-of-innocence\/","title":{"rendered":"Unkillable &ldquo;Songs of Innocence&rdquo;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/2020\/10\/u2-songs-of-innocence-apple-remove.html\">Russ Frushtick<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/512pixels.net\/2020\/10\/removing-u2s-songs-of-innocence\/\">Stephen Hackett<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/2020\/10\/u2-songs-of-innocence-apple-remove.html\"><p>Around 2016 or 2017, a couple years after Apple launched its CarPlay service, allowing your vehicle to sync with iOS, I started noticing something odd. Whenever I got into a car and connected my phone, it would automatically play something I had purchased on iTunes: a list of options so small &mdash; just nine albums total &mdash; it meant I was incessantly hearing the same tracks over and over again. And as much as I love Huey Lewis, &ldquo;The Heart of Rock &amp; Roll&rdquo; has its limits. The albums were constantly syncing to my newer devices because of some iCloud setting somewhere; even deleting them didn&rsquo;t do the trick, as they&rsquo;d continue to play over the cloud. After suffering with it for a few years, I found out that <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/HT208167#:~:text=In%20the%20menu%20bar%20at,the%20window%2C%20then%20click%20All.\">you could &ldquo;hide&rdquo; albums from iTunes<\/a>, ensuring that they&rsquo;re never automatically played. It saved me from the shame of hearing the first track of the<em> Charlie Brown Christmas<\/em> album for the 700th time. I was free.<\/p><p>But one album remained: <em>Songs of Innocence<\/em>.<\/p><p>Unlike the other albums, there was no way to hide this, and it never appeared in my purchased albums. Because I <em>hadn&rsquo;t<\/em> purchased it. It was a gift from Tim Cook and Bono. And due to some quirk in iTunes, it was unkillable.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>A few days after writing everything you just read, I decided to give one more call to Apple support, hoping to better understand what exactly was preventing them from removing the album in the first place. Here&rsquo;s an edited transcript of the unthinkable conversation that ensued[&#8230;]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/11\/a-a-a-a-a-very-good-song\/\">A a a a a Very Good Song<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/15\/removing-u2s-songs-of-innocence\/\">Removing U2&rsquo;s &ldquo;Songs of Innocence&rdquo;<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"unkillable-songs-of-innocence-update-2025-09-29\">Update (<a href=\"#unkillable-songs-of-innocence-update-2025-09-29\">2025-09-29<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@lapcatsoftware\/115273996567308410\">Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@lapcatsoftware\/115273996567308410\">\n<p>After all these years, I still can&rsquo;t get rid of U2 Songs of Innocence.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russ Frushtick (via Stephen Hackett): Around 2016 or 2017, a couple years after Apple launched its CarPlay service, allowing your vehicle to sync with iOS, I started noticing something odd. Whenever I got into a car and connected my phone, it would automatically play something I had purchased on iTunes: a list of options so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-10-27T21:09:33Z","apple_news_api_id":"21419ea3-a826-4c5b-9371-fb5d2a9039b7","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-09-29T15:27:21Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AIUGeo6gmTFuTcftdKpA5tw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[794,31,1837,224,189,30,1666,157],"class_list":["post-30547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-carplay","tag-ios","tag-ios-14","tag-itunes","tag-itunesstore","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-15","tag-music"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49397,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30547\/revisions\/49397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}