“We’re back, re-applying for the job of best band in the world,” U2 frontman Bono introduced onstage at London’s Astoria Theatre on the evening of February 7, 2001. When “Beautiful Day,” the lead single from the band’s tenth album, All That You Can’t Go away Behind, gained three Grammy Awards simply two weeks later, it should have felt like affirmation that they received their outdated job again.
Like Nirvana, who was additionally a contender for the “best band in the world” title within the 90s, U2 spent a lot of the last decade intentionally selecting their fame aside. For his or her 1991 masterpiece, Achtung Child, the band jettisoned their well-worn sincerity and fascination with American roots music in favor of recording one thing darker and extra abrasive.
U2 continued this creative trajectory by means of their subsequent two albums, 1993’s Zooropa and 1997’s Pop, experimenting with digital music and writing extra disillusioned lyrics. However after Pop’s underwhelming vital and business efficiency, the band realized that that they had, within the phrases of guitarist the Edge, “taken the deconstruction of the rock’n’roll band format” so far as they might.
Take heed to “Beautiful Day” on Apple Music and Spotify.
With the recording of All That You Can’t Go away Behind, U2, for the primary time of their profession, made a acutely aware effort to sound just like the U2 of outdated. To this finish, the group reunited with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who had produced The Unforgettable Hearth, The Joshua Tree, and Achtung Child, to make sure that they had been capturing that basic U2 sound.
Even so, that they had reservations about drawing on their previous: When the Edge needed to play the track with a guitar tone that he had used on U2’s first three albums – jangly, with a bit little bit of distortion and a number of reverb – his bandmates tried to persuade him to discover a new one. (The Edge finally saved the acquainted tone.)
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“Beautiful Day” grew out of “Always,” a track that U2 wrote within the earliest recording periods for All That You Can’t Go away Behind however weren’t completely glad with. Take heed to “Always” and also you’ll see how carefully its refrain resembles that of the later hit. The band continued to tinker with “Always” till someday, whereas jamming within the studio, Bono spontaneously sang “It’s a beautiful day” – and similar to that, they not solely had a brand new strategy to an outdated track, however the genesis of a completely new one.
Bono wrote a completely new set of lyrics that steered loss but additionally optimism. “You’re out of luck and the reason that you had to care/The traffic is stuck and you’re not moving anywhere,” Bono croons originally of the track, in a voice that’s nearer to talking than singing. However moments later, the refrain hits like a sunbeam breaking by means of rainclouds as Bono reminds you, “It’s a beautiful day / Don’t let it get away.”
There are just a few gildings that give the track a extra fashionable sound – Eno added some synthesized strings originally, in addition to a drum machine that thumps and clicks all through the observe – however “Beautiful Day” derives virtually all of its energy from letting U2 do what they do finest. After adopting a rougher and extra understated vocal type on Zooropa and Pop, Bono returned to utilizing the complete vary of his voice, a blinding and inimitable instrument.
To this present day he stays certainly one of rock’s biggest singers, one who can imbue a line like “Teach me, I know I’m not a hopeless case” with the emotive drive of a wrecking ball. Likewise, the Edge’s return to a well-recognized guitar tone – after a number of years of attempting to not sound like himself – looks like a heat hug from an outdated buddy, and underscores simply how merely efficient his taking part in is. And even with the drum machine, U2’s rhythm part is as hermetic as ever, with bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. including shade and punch to the observe.
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Critically and commercially, “Beautiful Day” was the hit that U2 wanted. Critics who had cooled on the band’s late-90s work hailed the track as a return to kind: Rolling Stone was notably praiseworthy, later calling it the ninth-best track of the 2000s and including it to the journal’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” record.
After its launch as a single in October 2000, the track topped music gross sales charts in almost a dozen international locations and offered greater than 1,000,000 copies all over the world. And on the forty third Annual Grammy Awards, “Beautiful Day” took house the trophies for Track of the 12 months, File of the 12 months, and Greatest Rock Efficiency by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
Take heed to the very best of U2 on Apple Music and Spotify.
However the track’s true legacy is within the moments that it has soundtracked during the last 20 years. “Beautiful Day” has been on the setlist of each single U2 live performance because the starting of the Elevation tour behind All That You Can’t Go away Behind in 2001. When U2 carried out the halftime present for Tremendous Bowl XXXVI, 5 months after 9/11, the band opened with “Beautiful Day” earlier than paying tribute to the victims of the assault with “MLK” and “Where the Streets Have No Name.”
And when Barack and Michelle Obama organized a digital graduation ceremony for all the scholars who graduated amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it included a canopy of “Beautiful Day,” sung by Camila Cabello, Ben Platt, Khalid, Coldplay’s Chris Martin and extra – launched by Bono himself, who mentioned “the song was not a description of where we were at. It was a prayer for where we could go.”
“Beautiful Day” might be heard on the brand new twentieth anniversary reissue of All That You Can’t Go away Behind. Together with a remaster of the unique album, varied codecs embrace as much as 39 further bonus tracks, a e book of archival images by Anton Corbijn, and a 19-track dwell set of U2’s efficiency on the Fleet Heart in Boston, Massachusetts on the Elevation Tour in June 2001.
Purchase or stream the twentieth anniversary editions of All That You Can’t Go away Behind.
