All That You Can't Leave Behind/Beautiful Day 15th Anniversary Thread

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namkcuR

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Apologies in advance for the length...

Fifteen years ago today, on October 9, 2000, U2 released the Beautiful Day single commercially, and later that month, on October 30, 2000, they released their tenth studio record from which Beautiful Day had been the first single, All That You Can't Leave Behind(so I'm doing this thread a bit early).

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Much has been written and said about this record in the fifteen years since its release, both good and bad. It garnered much critical acclaim upon its release, with Rolling Stone going as far as to call it the band's "third masterpiece" and ranking it #139 on their 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time," but there has been an enduring view of the record over time among many within the die-hard fanbase as a safe record, a retreat from the musical adventurousness that had characterized much of their earlier work in favor of chasing a relevance that was once a given.

It is difficult to talk about All That You Can't Leave Behind without talking about its predecessor, Pop, and the rapidly changing landscape of mainstream popular music that both were released in.

U2 had been one of many bands to rise to stardom on the wave of alternative rock that had been building steadily throughout the 80s before exploding in the early 90s, and their rise culminated with the release of one of their pantheon records, Achtung Baby, and the phenomenally successful and inventive Zoo TV tour in support of it and its sister record, Zooropa.

Between the end of that tour in the waning weeks of 1993 and the release of Pop in the Spring of 1997, the era of alternative rock had begun to fade. Grunge was over in the wake of the death of Kurt Cobain, the indefinite hiatus of Alice In Chains, and the breakup of Soundgarden. Aside from this, alternative rock was beginning to become over-saturated with post-grunge and pop-rock bands that were sounding less and less original.

At the same time, other forms of music were taking over the mainstream. Hip-hop had entered the mainstream at the end of the 80s and was on the brink of becoming the dominant genre in popular music. Electronic music that had been popular in Europe for years was experiencing a surge in popularity in North America. Pop music was in the midst of a huge comeback in the late 90s, after having taken a backseat for much of the decade, with the explosion of boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, and 98 Degrees, "pop princesses" such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, girl groups such as the Spice Girls, and by 1999, artists from the "Latin Explosion", led by Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, and Jennifer Lopez, among others.

On top of all of this, as the popularity of alternative rock began to wane, a new form of rock music began to take its place in the mainstream, namely the rock-rap hybrid nu-metal, led by Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, and the like.

And so Pop - a record in which the band had experimented with dance beats, and techno and electronic sounds - was released in the Spring of 1997, and maybe because despite said experimentation it was still an alternative rock record at its core at a time when the masses didn't want that so much anymore, or maybe because even with said experimentation it still wasn't techno or electronic enough for true fans of those genres, or maybe because it didn't sound enough like U2, or maybe because of some combination of the above, the record just didn't happen in the U.S. It was fairly successful internationally, as was the tour(after a rocky start in the States), but in America, where U2 have always wanted to be liked, the record flopped.

By the time the Popmart tour concluded in the Spring of 1998, the band were at a crossroads. They were heading towards their 40s and, perhaps for the first time in light of the reception Pop and Popmart got, facing their mortality as a commercially viable band, at least with regards to future studio recordings. This was visible in their sudden rash of retrospective releases - The Best Of 1980-1990 in 1998, and a VH1 Legends episode as well as a Classic Albums DVD about The Joshua Tree in 1999 - after they had never really looked backward at all in their career up to that point.

To illustrate how dramatically the perception of U2 had changed among young people and teens in just a few short years, I'll share an anecdote from my own life. In the fall of 1999, a year and a half after the end of Popmart and a year before Beautiful Day and All That You Can't Leave Behind would hit, I was starting my freshman year of high school. On one of the first days, in homeroom, the teacher had each student partner up with the student next to him or her and conduct a brief interview through which they would learn basic facts about each other and then share it with the class. It was a "getting to know each other" type of exercise. So, one of the facts my partner learned about me and subsequently shared with the class was that my favorite band was U2. The teacher, who I'm guessing was probably in her mid-to-late 30s at the time, expressed surprise at this, and shared that she loved U2 as well, but that she would've thought they were old men and not cool as far as we(the kids) were concerned(I'm paraphrasing here, I don't remember her exact words), and some other kid in the class piped up, 'they are'. They were yesterday's news as far as many fourteen/fifteen/sixteen-year-olds in 1999 were concerned.

They were about to transition from being superstars to being legends and elder statesmen of a dying genre, and they had to figure out what that meant. Were they going to continue to make a kind of music the masses didn't necessarily have an appetite for anymore, or were they going to adapt their brand of anthemic rock music to a music scene that was hungry for shiny pop hooks?

At the same time, after a decade of intense experimentation with varying levels of success, and especially after the frustrations of making Pop and never being able to make it live up to the vision they had, I think they really were burnt out on making those types of records. I think they were genuine in their desire to get back to being "four guys in a room" and sincere in their desire to move away from the sonic extravaganzas of the 90s and toward a more basic, organic approach to making records that really focused on the craft of songwriting.

So I think where they were in terms of their future commercial viability and where they were in terms of the artistic direction they wanted to go in intersected. I'm not saying that would necessarily be the case for subsequent records, but I think it was when they made this record in 1999 and 2000.

Which brings us to the record itself. It's not the easiest thing to give the record a review based only on its own merits, because in hindsight, many see it as not only a record, but as the unequivocal line between "old" U2 and "new" U2. Between the Bono who "didn't need the Pop kids" and the eternally-glasses-wearing, platitude-generating near-caricature who has often seemed to spend as much time being a social activist and shaking hands with politicians as he does making music. Between the Edge who made a name for himself as one of the influential rock guitarists of his generation through his desire to push the boundaries of how a guitar could literally sound and the Edge who has too often seemed to be imitating himself. Between the U2 who were trying, successfully, to secure their place in the rock pantheon with the Beatles and the Stones, and the U2 who are trying to stay on the charts with whoever today's chart-toppers are. Between the U2 who were alternative rock gods and the U2 who, as one writer put it, "settled for being Generation X's Rolling Stones."

I'm not sure all of that is entirely fair, but it is the perception among many fans. But difficult as it is to evaluate the record without letting its pivotal slot in the U2 catalog color said evaluation, I'm going to try. It's probably going to veer towards being too positive for some of you, because I enjoy the record more than some of you, but I'll try to remain objective.

I remember the first time I heard any of the record - U2.com was just about to launch for the first time prior to the record's release, and they were going to release a 30-second clip of one song per day or per week or something like that, I don't remember exactly, but it turned out they had put all the files up at the same time, and somebody figured it out, so everybody ended up having 30-second clips of all of the songs right away. I remember enjoying every single clip and looking forward to the record - which was my first 'new' U2 record as fan, although I got into the band a couple years earlier with their back catalog - with much anticipation. I still have those files. I also remember coming home from school on release day to find the CD waiting for me, and listening to it over and over.

So much has been said about the first four tracks, the singles, the big four, that I won't delve too deeply into them, but nontheless...

The album starts with Beautiful Day, the single that single-handedly resuscitated their career.

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It is driven by an infectious bassline and soaring chorus and, like much of the album, represents a return to that straight-ahead anthemic sound that made U2 superstars in the first place, but with a poppier sensibility than ever before. The electronic sounds that had dominated much of their 90s work weren't gone, but were now only in a complimentary role. I remember the first night I heard Beautiful Day back in the fall of 2000. I had downloaded an mp3 of it shortly after it was released to radio, and I listened to it over and over. All these years later, when it has become as much of a warhorse as Pride(In The Name Of Love) or Where The Streets Have No Name or any number of others, I often find myself trying to hear the song the way I heard it that night and in the weeks that followed. It's not always easy to hear it that way anymore, but sometimes, if I'm in the right mood, I can. Because for as played out as it's become, it's still a pretty good song. The aforementioned bassline is as catchy as it ever was, I've always liked the stretched out 'da-a-a-ay, da-a-a-ay' at the end of the middle 8, and the 'what you don't have you don't need it now' lines at the end have always been my favorite part of the song(Bono's execution of them is one of the most 'rock' moments on the record, for my money), just to name a few of the good things about it. There's no denying it's a classic U2 track.

The single's b-sides are Always, an early version of what would become Beautiful Day, and Summer Rain, a melodic acoustic number.

Following Beautiful Day is Stuck In A Moment, the mid-tempo ballad about INXS frontman Michael Hutchence's suicide.

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For some, the song was and is too saccharine(perhaps less so in the subsequent acoustic version) for a band that had put out a song like Mofo just three and a half years earlier, but I've always liked it. The production on the album version might be a bit too sugary for some, but I think it's a warm, catchy, soulful melody, and Edge's vocal coda might be one the band's greatest pure pop moments.

The single's b-side(which also appeared as a b-side for Walk On) was Big Girls Are Best, a lightweight, poppy rocker that had its origins in the Pop sessions.

Elevation is one of the few 'rock' tracks on the record, and is the one that most evokes the sonic terrain of their 90s work, even if it isn't nearly as intricate or dense or lyrically substantial as the best of said 90s work.

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It's not near their greatest rock songs, but it is is a fun, catchy, easily digestible pop-rock song that manages to be so without sounding pedestrian. As a caveat, I will add that many probably agree that the single, AKA "Tomb Raider" mix is superior to the album version, as it has more "umph", for lack of a better term, to it than the album version, and more closely resembles the full-band live arrangement, which was a great opener for the Elevation tour and remains a live staple to this day(although there were some less popular live arrangements of it on the Vertigo tour and maybe even the 360 tour).

In the record's fourth slot is Walk On, a feel-good mid-tempo anthem of perseverance built on a big, warm, shiny, happy guitar riff and melody.

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Although this kind of guitar riff and melody would sound perhaps stale and derivative when used in tracks on subsequent U2 records, there's something fresh and genuine about it on this track. When I say 'feel-good', I mean it - it's hard not to have a smile on your face when the guitar kicks in at the beginning of the track. It's a crowd-pleasing moment, as is the huge sing-along chorus and the equally huge sing-along coda with its 'all that you [fill in the blank]' repetitions - arguably an homage to the Pink Floyd track Eclipse(although when you think about bands U2 might pay homage to, Pink Floyd isn't exactly at the top of the list).

The song is ostensibly about Aung San Suu Kyi, but it can really be about walking on after any difficult event or time in one's life, and the universality of the sentiment is no doubt part of what made the single a success.

I've long felt that the big four of All That You Can't Leave Behind ought to be the big five, and that the fifth one should be the record's actual fifth track, closing out its first side, Kite. I believe it is as good a ballad as any the band have recorded in the twenty-first century and can stand respectably with some of their classic ballads. Musically, it's not terribly original for the band, as it would fit right in with some of their 80s ballads, but it's so well executed that it doesn't matter. The chorus manages the feat of being extremely catchy without being shallow or insubstantial or cheesy. The song's lyric is an eminently relatable one about aging, loss, and the passage of time, and it's sung in an atmosphere that is appropriately bittersweet and dense without being too overwrought, carried by some heart-string-pulling guitar melodies. A great track that got even better live on the Vertigo tour several years later.

The record's second side starts with In A Little While, which has received much flack from the die-hard fanbase. There was always a faction that found it to be boring, but the ire for it intensified in 2009 when the band started playing it regularly on the 360 tour, to the chagrin of die-hards who felt that there were too many better songs they could be playing to waste a slot on it(the song took on additional meaning for the band, and Bono in particular, when it became the last song Joey Ramone heard before he died). I personally have never gotten the hate for it. I don't find it boring at all. I think it has an infectious groove, and that Bono's flawed, raspy vocal, for all the criticism it's received, actually adds some emotional heft to the song in the same way his tired, subtly imperfect vocal adds to the studio recording of One. The cracks in his voice add a certain humanity to the track. Lyrically, it's not earth-shattering, but it does contain one of my favorite lyrical passages of twenty-first century U2:

"A man dreams one day to fly
A man takes a rocket ship into the sky
He lives on a star that's dying in the night
He follows in the trail, the scatter of light"

I think it's as concise a statement of where Bono felt he and the band were, and to some degree still are, as a band, as you're likely to find, and I think it's pretty poetic too. They felt like they were on a dying star when they made this record, and I think that informs much about it. I think they've been following in the trail, the scatter of light, in varying degrees ever since, particularly with How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb and No Line On The Horizon.

Wild Honey is a light-weight acoustic ballad that for some reason is the subject of much scorn within the fanbase. Yes, lyrically it is silly(although there is something compelling about "if you go there, go with me"), but musically, all I hear is a really warm, joyous melody that it's hard not to sing along to. It's one of the very few times in the last fifteen years when I'd say the band sounded truly joyful.

Peace On Earth is a song I've sort of changed my opinion on just in the last few days I've been listening to the record while writing this. Musically, it's kind of placid, and that acts to cloak the hurt and anger in the lyrics. Indeed, Bono has called the song 'as bitter and as angry a song as U2 have ever written'. It was written after the Omagh bombing, about which Bono has said, 'the closest I ever came to a crisis of faith happened after that'. So the lyric is really an angry eye-roll at the notion of peace on Earth and an angry interrogation of faith.

There has been some criticism of some of the lyrics in the verses, especially the third verse with its 'Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda/There lives are bigger than any big idea' couplet, both for being a bit too heart-on-sleeve and for being a bit of a forced rhyme, but there are also good moments, such as "and you become a monster/so the monster will not break you', which I think is something that does happen. I think the chorus lyrics are actually quite effective at portraying the pain and loss of faith in the aftermath of tragedy - i.e. "to tell the ones who hear no sound/whose sons are living in the ground/peace on Earth", "She never got to say goodbye/to see the color in his eyes/now he's in the dirt/peace on Earth", "Jesus sing a song you wrote/the words are sticking in my throat/peace on Earth", etc. Musically, the chorus is melodically and, especially, rhythmically catchy, without being too bright for its lyrical content. I never disliked the song - I even liked it in the early days of the record - but it was always one of the tracks I came back to least, in no small measure because it takes a bit too long for the song to really get going, and the vocal melody, while pleasant enough, isn't one that really grabs the listener(particularly in the verses), but it's re-growing on me at the moment.

I've always felt that When I Look At The World is an under-appreciated track, and overlooked when people talk about the second side of All That You Can't Leave Behind being weak. All throughout, it is driven by a bubbly guitar tone that is at once inviting and melancholy. The lyric is, as Bono put it, "written from the point of view of someone who is having a crisis of faith looking at someone who has built their house upon the rock," and I think it's one of the stronger lyrics on the record, particularly the verse

"When the night is someone else's
and you're trying to get some sleep
when your thoughts are too expensive
to ever want to keep"

The song builds up to a bridge that takes flight, first with my favorite guitar solo on the record - a soaring yet bittersweet melody that sounds like something you might hear on an organ in a church or something - and then with perhaps Bono's most impassioned vocal on the record in which he says "I can't wait/any longer/I can't wait/till I'm stronger/I can't wait/any longer/to see what you see/when you look at the world." The lyrical tone of the song up to this point is of a person who is unable to believe but who perhaps wishes they could, and that sentiment climaxes in this bridge. I think it's interesting that once this bridge ends, the final verse changes the tone to that of a person who is unable to believe and who doesn't want to anymore, with the very bitter lyric

"I'm in the waiting room
I can't see for the smoke
I think of you and your holy book
while the rest of us choke"

only to kind of revert to the first tone with the closing lines

"tell me tell me, what do you see?
tell me tell me, what's wrong with me?"

I think that little back-and-forth in lyrical tone is an interesting illustration of the sort of conflict that can arise in someone who is struggling with their faith, as if the speaker isn't sure they have admiration or contempt for those who do believe without question.

An underrated track, and it's a shame Edge "forgot how to play it" and thus couldn't play it live.

New York continues the tradition, started with Exit, Acrobat, and Please, of the penultimate track of a record being a dark, brooding rocker. It is somewhat divisive among fans, with some thinking it is underrated and under-appreciated, and some thinking it is boring and clunky. I think it's a solid track, with musically claustrophic, lyrically paranoid verses that explode into a cathartic chorus with a big riff and soaring vocal. The juxtaposition between the verses and the choruses works well to these ears. The track arguably shares some musical territory with the band's early sound - it almost sounds like it could've been a track on their third LP, War - and that adds a welcome additional flavor to the record. This was especially evident in the live performances on the Elevation Tour, which took the song to another level, particularly with the extended coda guitar solo.

The record concludes with Grace, another maligned track here on the blue crack. I understand the common complaints that it's musically meandering and that some of the lyrics are not up-to-par, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with them. Musically, if you tune out the vocals and focus only on the instrumental, it's really a bubbly, atmospheric piece that feels like it could've been an outtake from the band's fourth LP, The Unforgettable Fire - I'm thinking specifically of something like Bass Trap or the instrumental portion of Promenade. I can see how some would think it is meandering, insofar as it is probably a minute or two too long. Lyrically, I suppose that are some lines that aren't worth defending, but I like the general sentiment of it, which is sort of a less euphoric, more meditative all-you-need-is-love type thing. I think "Grace makes beauty out of ugly things" is a nice thought to end a record on. It's not one of the great U2 ballads, but it's pleasant enough, and a calm, soothing way to end the record proper.

I say 'record proper', because The Ground Beneath Her Feet, originally on the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack, was a bonus track in some regions.

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Some people consider the track to be a part of the record because it was included in some regions, and some people don't because it seems to occupy a different sonic, perhaps even emotional, space than most of the record. I think both viewpoints are valid, but I've always considered it a part of the record, and according to this excerpt from the song's Wikipedia page, the band wanted it to be as well:

"The Ground Beneath Her Feet" was originally intended to be a single, therefore a music video was created for the song's release. However, Interscope Records declined to give the song a single release because U2 were on the verge of completing their new album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, and record executives did not want to confuse fans by releasing a non-album single. Instead, a promotional single was released to media sources, but it received very little airplay on both radio and television. After the song's release on the film's soundtrack, U2 hoped to feature the song on their newest album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, but instead the song was only released as a bonus track on UK, Australian and Japanese releases of the album.

We don't know why it didn't end up on the record, but it seems like the band wanted it to be. In any case, I think it's a gorgeous track. Salman Rushdie's lyric is beautiful, as are the melodies, and the atmospherics and production are right out of The Unforgettable Fire or The Joshua Tree. Bono's vocal is appropriately restrained and hits, I feel, the perfect balance between not being too understated and not being too over-the-top. Perhaps more than anything else, the ending is just tremendous - the steel guitar solo and the 'my-oh-my' repititions gradually growing in intensity - going from being underneath the solo to being on top of it - are kind of hypnotizing, the combination just washes over the listener, and if the song were part of the record proper, its ending would be my favorite part of the whole record.

All That You Can't Leave Behind revived the band's career - especially in the United States - after it had been lagging in the mid-to-late 90s and gave them a momentum that carried them through much of the next decade. It was a massively successful record, both commercially and critically.

It sold twelve million copies worldwide, the fourth most of any U2 record behind The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, and Rattle And Hum, and its singles were all pretty successful. It was really the last time the band had multiple successful singles from one album - Despite the huge success of Vertigo, none of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb's other singles did all that much, No Line On The Horizon's singles were an unmitigated disaster, and Songs Of Innocence's singles haven't fared that much better so far.

Critically, the album was well reviewed and did exceptionally well at the Grammys. In 2001, Beautiful Day won Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, Song Of The Year, and Record Of The Year. and All That You Can't Leave Behind won Best Rock Album and was nominated for Album Of The Year, which it controversially lost to the surprise winner, the O'Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. In 2002, Elevation won Best Rock Performance BY A Duo Or Group With Vocals and was nominated for Best Rock Song, Stuck In A Moment won Song Of The Year and Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, and Walk On won Record Of The Year - making All That You Can't Leave Behind the only record ever to spawn two different winners of that award - and Best Rock Song. Finally, in 2003, Walk On was nominated for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals. All together, the record won nine Grammy awards.

Even though its successor, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb won almost as many, All That You Can't Leave Behind's achievement seems bigger, because the latter was sort of riding on the wave of the former's success - and the latter's Album Of The Year win was seen by some as a make-up for the former's loss in the same category - whereas the former's success was built completely on its own merit. To have every single released from the record win a Grammy, and to have all but one of them win multiple Grammys, is something special, and the band will probably never come close to replicating that feat. The record couldn't have been more successful, commercially and critically, and the band is still reaping the benefits of what it did from them.

It's ironic, then, that a lot of people within the die hard fanbase look down on the record. It might be partially due to the perception mentioned earlier of the record being the beginning of the "new" U2, but it's also often due simply to some people not liking the music. I can understand that if you loved what the band was doing in the 90s - as I did and do - that All That You Can't Leave Behind might not be up your ally, but I don't agree with the sentiment that the record is boring. On the contrary, I feel that this record has a vibrancy that much of their later work prior to Songs Of Innocence lacked. There is a warmth, and Earthiness, that permeates the record. Where much of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb feels sterile, overcooked, and like it's trying very hard, All That You Can't Leave Behind feels genuine, natural, and organic. There's an undeniable authenticity about it. In the lead-up to the record's release, Bono referred to it as 'titanium soul', and I think that rings true. Whether you like these songs or not, they don't have that artificial feeling that some of their subsequent songs arguably do.

And where No Line On The Horizon seemed like it didn't always know what it wanted to say, All That You Can't Leave Behind seemed to always know what it was about - questioning of faith(Peace On Earth, When I Look At The World), different aspects of aging(Kite, New York), perseverance(Stuck In A Moment, Walk On), and rejuvenation(Beautiful Day, Elevation).

Those themes would, of course, take on a whole new meaning after 9/11. Even though the record was released nearly a year before the attacks, many of the songs sound and read as though they could've been written after. It was kind of spooky how much the record resonated in the aftermath. That fact, and U2's role as the first band to resume touring in the United States after the attacks, as well as their much celebrated 2002 Superbowl halftime show performance, no doubt play a part in the way this record is remembered by the general public.

So, they kind of caught lightning in a bottle with All That You Can't Leave Behind, and it often felt like they were trying to re-create that magic with the following two records. But often, the more you try to create that kind of magic, the more elusive it becomes. It was a moment in time, and it gave birth a tremendously successful piece of work that meant a lot to a lot of people. And yes, for better or worse, they've never been the same band they used to be since this record was released. But then, they've never been the same band they were before Achtung Baby since that record was released, or the same band they were before The Joshua Tree since it was released. Bands evolve, bands grow, and sometimes bands lose motivation to be artistically groundbreaking or sonically exciting. when that happens, the band can either put their energy into the only thing left - an honest expression of something through the medium of songwriting - or they can manufacture empty-sounding attempts at staying relevant. U2 have done both to varying degrees of success in the years since All That You Can't Leave Behind, but I feel that that record was almost entirely the former.

So, here's to All That You Can't Leave Behind.

Congrats if you made it to the end of this.

I'll leave you with some video links from that era:

U2 - Beautiful Day (Official Music Video) - Beautiful Day video
- YouTube - Beautiful Day video v2
U2 - Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of - Stuck In A Moment video - European version
Couldn't find the American version of Stuck In A Moment
U2 - Elevation (Official Music Video) - Elevation video
U2, Walk On - Traduzida - Walk On video - partial, couldn't find the full version
U2 - Walk On (Official Music Video) - Walk On video - Brazilian version
- YouTube TRL - Beautiful Day, New York
U2 - Beautiful Day (My VH1 Music Awards) My VH1 Awards - Beautiful Day
U2 - Beautiful Day (Live at the 2000 europe music awards) 2000 MTV European Music Awards - Beautiful Day
- YouTube 2001 MTV Video Music Awards - Vanguard Clip, Elevation, stuck In A Moment
U2's Post Show Interview from 2001 VMAs 2001 MTV Video Music Awards Post-Show Interview
U2 Live Irving Plaza, New York (Full Concert) 2000 Full Irving Plaza show
U2 - Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of Live at BBC Radio One 23-10-2000 BBC Radio One - Stuck In A Moment
U2 - Beautiful Day - Top Of The Pops - 02.11.2000 BBC Top Of The Pops - Beautiful Day
U2 - Elevation - Top Of The Pops - 02.11.2000 BBC Top Of The Pops - Elevation
- YouTube 2001 Grammy Awards - Beautiful Day
- YouTube 2002 Grammy Awards - Walk On
Wanted to include the 2000 SNL performances, but they're not on youtube
 
I love this album. Well, most of it. But it's my 4th favorite U2 album because it was the one that made me a fan.

Amazing that it's been 15 years since ATYCLB was released.
 
I listened to those 30 second clips so much that I think it tainted my listening experience when it leaked. I still hear the clip segments when I listen.

Certainly their most Poppy effort. The 2nd half is too weak to get it out of the lower end of my album rankings. Stuck, IALW, and Walk On would be songs That would send me to the restroom during a concert. I actually prefer the album version of Elevation to the Tomb Raider Mix


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
 
I don't know if it's still my favorite, but it's definitely the most important U2 album to me. It's the first one I ever bought, on October 13, 2001. I remember that day vividly. ATYCLB got me through some tough times with anxiety and depression when I was in 8th grade and beyond, so I can't give an unbiased judgement on the quality of the songs. They're so much more to me than "good" or "bad."
 
Epic OP.

I have a theory about internet-era U2 fans, which is this: A lot of said fans' first 'rock' band -- after they go through the pop-star period of childhood & early-teen years -- is U2. U2 are sort-of like the Jesuits in that they get their hooks in a lot of young people when the young people are just on the cusp. For this reason, a lot of U2 fans of a certain age associate U2 with their 'maturation' and expect the band to be serious and 'deep'.

Therefore, when U2 decide to make a commercial-type single or release a song that has mainstream appeal, these U2 fans view it as a betrayal. I think ATYCLB suffers the most from this, as Internet-era music fans rejected it as their favorite band's attempt to sound pop.

For me, I'm on the fence with regards to the album: I can appreciate the really good songwriting and performances, and enjoy it. On the other hand, the production and mixing is so bad -- and yes, such a blatant attempt at a 'clean', bass-lite, vocals-high, radio-friendly sound -- that sometimes I can't stand it.

What's most significant about this album is not the actual music, strangely, but what the album itself represented. And what it represented is U2's conscious decision to become a 'veteran' band, instead of a contemporary band.
 
Apologies in advance for the length...

Fifteen years ago today, on October 9, 2000, U2 released the Beautiful Day single commercially, and later that month, on October 30, 2000, they released their tenth studio record from which Beautiful Day had been the first single, All That You Can't Leave Behind(so I'm doing this thread a bit early).

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Much has been written and said about this record in the fifteen years since its release, both good and bad. It garnered much critical acclaim upon its release, with Rolling Stone going as far as to call it the band's "third masterpiece" and ranking it #139 on their 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time," but there has been an enduring view of the record over time among many within the die-hard fanbase as a safe record, a retreat from the musical adventurousness that had characterized much of their earlier work in favor of chasing a relevance that was once a given.

It is difficult to talk about All That You Can't Leave Behind without talking about its predecessor, Pop, and the rapidly changing landscape of mainstream popular music that both were released in.

U2 had been one of many bands to rise to stardom on the wave of alternative rock that had been building steadily throughout the 80s before exploding in the early 90s, and their rise culminated with the release of one of their pantheon records, Achtung Baby, and the phenomenally successful and inventive Zoo TV tour in support of it and its sister record, Zooropa.

Between the end of that tour in the waning weeks of 1993 and the release of Pop in the Spring of 1997, the era of alternative rock had begun to fade. Grunge was over in the wake of the death of Kurt Cobain, the indefinite hiatus of Alice In Chains, and the breakup of Soundgarden. Aside from this, alternative rock was beginning to become over-saturated with post-grunge and pop-rock bands that were sounding less and less original.

At the same time, other forms of music were taking over the mainstream. Hip-hop had entered the mainstream at the end of the 80s and was on the brink of becoming the dominant genre in popular music. Electronic music that had been popular in Europe for years was experiencing a surge in popularity in North America. Pop music was in the midst of a huge comeback in the late 90s, after having taken a backseat for much of the decade, with the explosion of boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, and 98 Degrees, "pop princesses" such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, girl groups such as the Spice Girls, and by 1999, artists from the "Latin Explosion", led by Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, and Jennifer Lopez, among others.

On top of all of this, as the popularity of alternative rock began to wane, a new form of rock music began to take its place in the mainstream, namely the rock-rap hybrid nu-metal, led by Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, and the like.

And so Pop - a record in which the band had experimented with dance beats, and techno and electronic sounds - was released in the Spring of 1997, and maybe because despite said experimentation it was still an alternative rock record at its core at a time when the masses didn't want that so much anymore, or maybe because even with said experimentation it still wasn't techno or electronic enough for true fans of those genres, or maybe because it didn't sound enough like U2, or maybe because of some combination of the above, the record just didn't happen in the U.S. It was fairly successful internationally, as was the tour(after a rocky start in the States), but in America, where U2 have always wanted to be liked, the record flopped.

By the time the Popmart tour concluded in the Spring of 1998, the band were at a crossroads. They were heading towards their 40s and, perhaps for the first time in light of the reception Pop and Popmart got, facing their mortality as a commercially viable band, at least with regards to future studio recordings. This was visible in their sudden rash of retrospective releases - The Best Of 1980-1990 in 1998, and a VH1 Legends episode as well as a Classic Albums DVD about The Joshua Tree in 1999 - after they had never really looked backward at all in their career up to that point.

To illustrate how dramatically the perception of U2 had changed among young people and teens in just a few short years, I'll share an anecdote from my own life. In the fall of 1999, a year and a half after the end of Popmart and a year before Beautiful Day and All That You Can't Leave Behind would hit, I was starting my freshman year of high school. On one of the first days, in homeroom, the teacher had each student partner up with the student next to him or her and conduct a brief interview through which they would learn basic facts about each other and then share it with the class. It was a "getting to know each other" type of exercise. So, one of the facts my partner learned about me and subsequently shared with the class was that my favorite band was U2. The teacher, who I'm guessing was probably in her mid-to-late 30s at the time, expressed surprise at this, and shared that she loved U2 as well, but that she would've thought they were old men and not cool as far as we(the kids) were concerned(I'm paraphrasing here, I don't remember her exact words), and some other kid in the class piped up, 'they are'. They were yesterday's news as far as many fourteen/fifteen/sixteen-year-olds in 1999 were concerned.

They were about to transition from being superstars to being legends and elder statesmen of a dying genre, and they had to figure out what that meant. Were they going to continue to make a kind of music the masses didn't necessarily have an appetite for anymore, or were they going to adapt their brand of anthemic rock music to a music scene that was hungry for shiny pop hooks?

At the same time, after a decade of intense experimentation with varying levels of success, and especially after the frustrations of making Pop and never being able to make it live up to the vision they had, I think they really were burnt out on making those types of records. I think they were genuine in their desire to get back to being "four guys in a room" and sincere in their desire to move away from the sonic extravaganzas of the 90s and toward a more basic, organic approach to making records that really focused on the craft of songwriting.

So I think where they were in terms of their future commercial viability and where they were in terms of the artistic direction they wanted to go in intersected. I'm not saying that would necessarily be the case for subsequent records, but I think it was when they made this record in 1999 and 2000.

Which brings us to the record itself. It's not the easiest thing to give the record a review based only on its own merits, because in hindsight, many see it as not only a record, but as the unequivocal line between "old" U2 and "new" U2. Between the Bono who "didn't need the Pop kids" and the eternally-glasses-wearing, platitude-generating near-caricature who has often seemed to spend as much time being a social activist and shaking hands with politicians as he does making music. Between the Edge who made a name for himself as one of the influential rock guitarists of his generation through his desire to push the boundaries of how a guitar could literally sound and the Edge who has too often seemed to be imitating himself. Between the U2 who were trying, successfully, to secure their place in the rock pantheon with the Beatles and the Stones, and the U2 who are trying to stay on the charts with whoever today's chart-toppers are. Between the U2 who were alternative rock gods and the U2 who, as one writer put it, "settled for being Generation X's Rolling Stones."

I'm not sure all of that is entirely fair, but it is the perception among many fans. But difficult as it is to evaluate the record without letting its pivotal slot in the U2 catalog color said evaluation, I'm going to try. It's probably going to veer towards being too positive for some of you, because I enjoy the record more than some of you, but I'll try to remain objective.

I remember the first time I heard any of the record - U2.com was just about to launch for the first time prior to the record's release, and they were going to release a 30-second clip of one song per day or per week or something like that, I don't remember exactly, but it turned out they had put all the files up at the same time, and somebody figured it out, so everybody ended up having 30-second clips of all of the songs right away. I remember enjoying every single clip and looking forward to the record - which was my first 'new' U2 record as fan, although I got into the band a couple years earlier with their back catalog - with much anticipation. I still have those files. I also remember coming home from school on release day to find the CD waiting for me, and listening to it over and over.

So much has been said about the first four tracks, the singles, the big four, that I won't delve too deeply into them, but nontheless...

The album starts with Beautiful Day, the single that single-handedly resuscitated their career.

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It is driven by an infectious bassline and soaring chorus and, like much of the album, represents a return to that straight-ahead anthemic sound that made U2 superstars in the first place, but with a poppier sensibility than ever before. The electronic sounds that had dominated much of their 90s work weren't gone, but were now only in a complimentary role. I remember the first night I heard Beautiful Day back in the fall of 2000. I had downloaded an mp3 of it shortly after it was released to radio, and I listened to it over and over. All these years later, when it has become as much of a warhorse as Pride(In The Name Of Love) or Where The Streets Have No Name or any number of others, I often find myself trying to hear the song the way I heard it that night and in the weeks that followed. It's not always easy to hear it that way anymore, but sometimes, if I'm in the right mood, I can. Because for as played out as it's become, it's still a pretty good song. The aforementioned bassline is as catchy as it ever was, I've always liked the stretched out 'da-a-a-ay, da-a-a-ay' at the end of the middle 8, and the 'what you don't have you don't need it now' lines at the end have always been my favorite part of the song(Bono's execution of them is one of the most 'rock' moments on the record, for my money), just to name a few of the good things about it. There's no denying it's a classic U2 track.

The single's b-sides are Always, an early version of what would become Beautiful Day, and Summer Rain, a melodic acoustic number.

Following Beautiful Day is Stuck In A Moment, the mid-tempo ballad about INXS frontman Michael Hutchence's suicide.

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For some, the song was and is too saccharine(perhaps less so in the subsequent acoustic version) for a band that had put out a song like Mofo just three and a half years earlier, but I've always liked it. The production on the album version might be a bit too sugary for some, but I think it's a warm, catchy, soulful melody, and Edge's vocal coda might be one the band's greatest pure pop moments.

The single's b-side(which also appeared as a b-side for Walk On) was Big Girls Are Best, a lightweight, poppy rocker that had its origins in the Pop sessions.

Elevation is one of the few 'rock' tracks on the record, and is the one that most evokes the sonic terrain of their 90s work, even if it isn't nearly as intricate or dense or lyrically substantial as the best of said 90s work.

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It's not near their greatest rock songs, but it is is a fun, catchy, easily digestible pop-rock song that manages to be so without sounding pedestrian. As a caveat, I will add that many probably agree that the single, AKA "Tomb Raider" mix is superior to the album version, as it has more "umph", for lack of a better term, to it than the album version, and more closely resembles the full-band live arrangement, which was a great opener for the Elevation tour and remains a live staple to this day(although there were some less popular live arrangements of it on the Vertigo tour and maybe even the 360 tour).

In the record's fourth slot is Walk On, a feel-good mid-tempo anthem of perseverance built on a big, warm, shiny, happy guitar riff and melody.

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Although this kind of guitar riff and melody would sound perhaps stale and derivative when used in tracks on subsequent U2 records, there's something fresh and genuine about it on this track. When I say 'feel-good', I mean it - it's hard not to have a smile on your face when the guitar kicks in at the beginning of the track. It's a crowd-pleasing moment, as is the huge sing-along chorus and the equally huge sing-along coda with its 'all that you [fill in the blank]' repetitions - arguably an homage to the Pink Floyd track Eclipse(although when you think about bands U2 might pay homage to, Pink Floyd isn't exactly at the top of the list).

The song is ostensibly about Aung San Suu Kyi, but it can really be about walking on after any difficult event or time in one's life, and the universality of the sentiment is no doubt part of what made the single a success.

I've long felt that the big four of All That You Can't Leave Behind ought to be the big five, and that the fifth one should be the record's actual fifth track, closing out its first side, Kite. I believe it is as good a ballad as any the band have recorded in the twenty-first century and can stand respectably with some of their classic ballads. Musically, it's not terribly original for the band, as it would fit right in with some of their 80s ballads, but it's so well executed that it doesn't matter. The chorus manages the feat of being extremely catchy without being shallow or insubstantial or cheesy. The song's lyric is an eminently relatable one about aging, loss, and the passage of time, and it's sung in an atmosphere that is appropriately bittersweet and dense without being too overwrought, carried by some heart-string-pulling guitar melodies. A great track that got even better live on the Vertigo tour several years later.

The record's second side starts with In A Little While, which has received much flack from the die-hard fanbase. There was always a faction that found it to be boring, but the ire for it intensified in 2009 when the band started playing it regularly on the 360 tour, to the chagrin of die-hards who felt that there were too many better songs they could be playing to waste a slot on it(the song took on additional meaning for the band, and Bono in particular, when it became the last song Joey Ramone heard before he died). I personally have never gotten the hate for it. I don't find it boring at all. I think it has an infectious groove, and that Bono's flawed, raspy vocal, for all the criticism it's received, actually adds some emotional heft to the song in the same way his tired, subtly imperfect vocal adds to the studio recording of One. The cracks in his voice add a certain humanity to the track. Lyrically, it's not earth-shattering, but it does contain one of my favorite lyrical passages of twenty-first century U2:

"A man dreams one day to fly
A man takes a rocket ship into the sky
He lives on a star that's dying in the night
He follows in the trail, the scatter of light"

I think it's as concise a statement of where Bono felt he and the band were, and to some degree still are, as a band, as you're likely to find, and I think it's pretty poetic too. They felt like they were on a dying star when they made this record, and I think that informs much about it. I think they've been following in the trail, the scatter of light, in varying degrees ever since, particularly with How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb and No Line On The Horizon.

Wild Honey is a light-weight acoustic ballad that for some reason is the subject of much scorn within the fanbase. Yes, lyrically it is silly(although there is something compelling about "if you go there, go with me"), but musically, all I hear is a really warm, joyous melody that it's hard not to sing along to. It's one of the very few times in the last fifteen years when I'd say the band sounded truly joyful.

Peace On Earth is a song I've sort of changed my opinion on just in the last few days I've been listening to the record while writing this. Musically, it's kind of placid, and that acts to cloak the hurt and anger in the lyrics. Indeed, Bono has called the song 'as bitter and as angry a song as U2 have ever written'. It was written after the Omagh bombing, about which Bono has said, 'the closest I ever came to a crisis of faith happened after that'. So the lyric is really an angry eye-roll at the notion of peace on Earth and an angry interrogation of faith.

There has been some criticism of some of the lyrics in the verses, especially the third verse with its 'Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda/There lives are bigger than any big idea' couplet, both for being a bit too heart-on-sleeve and for being a bit of a forced rhyme, but there are also good moments, such as "and you become a monster/so the monster will not break you', which I think is something that does happen. I think the chorus lyrics are actually quite effective at portraying the pain and loss of faith in the aftermath of tragedy - i.e. "to tell the ones who hear no sound/whose sons are living in the ground/peace on Earth", "She never got to say goodbye/to see the color in his eyes/now he's in the dirt/peace on Earth", "Jesus sing a song you wrote/the words are sticking in my throat/peace on Earth", etc. Musically, the chorus is melodically and, especially, rhythmically catchy, without being too bright for its lyrical content. I never disliked the song - I even liked it in the early days of the record - but it was always one of the tracks I came back to least, in no small measure because it takes a bit too long for the song to really get going, and the vocal melody, while pleasant enough, isn't one that really grabs the listener(particularly in the verses), but it's re-growing on me at the moment.

I've always felt that When I Look At The World is an under-appreciated track, and overlooked when people talk about the second side of All That You Can't Leave Behind being weak. All throughout, it is driven by a bubbly guitar tone that is at once inviting and melancholy. The lyric is, as Bono put it, "written from the point of view of someone who is having a crisis of faith looking at someone who has built their house upon the rock," and I think it's one of the stronger lyrics on the record, particularly the verse

"When the night is someone else's
and you're trying to get some sleep
when your thoughts are too expensive
to ever want to keep"

The song builds up to a bridge that takes flight, first with my favorite guitar solo on the record - a soaring yet bittersweet melody that sounds like something you might hear on an organ in a church or something - and then with perhaps Bono's most impassioned vocal on the record in which he says "I can't wait/any longer/I can't wait/till I'm stronger/I can't wait/any longer/to see what you see/when you look at the world." The lyrical tone of the song up to this point is of a person who is unable to believe but who perhaps wishes they could, and that sentiment climaxes in this bridge. I think it's interesting that once this bridge ends, the final verse changes the tone to that of a person who is unable to believe and who doesn't want to anymore, with the very bitter lyric

"I'm in the waiting room
I can't see for the smoke
I think of you and your holy book
while the rest of us choke"

only to kind of revert to the first tone with the closing lines

"tell me tell me, what do you see?
tell me tell me, what's wrong with me?"

I think that little back-and-forth in lyrical tone is an interesting illustration of the sort of conflict that can arise in someone who is struggling with their faith, as if the speaker isn't sure they have admiration or contempt for those who do believe without question.

An underrated track, and it's a shame Edge "forgot how to play it" and thus couldn't play it live.

New York continues the tradition, started with Exit, Acrobat, and Please, of the penultimate track of a record being a dark, brooding rocker. It is somewhat divisive among fans, with some thinking it is underrated and under-appreciated, and some thinking it is boring and clunky. I think it's a solid track, with musically claustrophic, lyrically paranoid verses that explode into a cathartic chorus with a big riff and soaring vocal. The juxtaposition between the verses and the choruses works well to these ears. The track arguably shares some musical territory with the band's early sound - it almost sounds like it could've been a track on their third LP, War - and that adds a welcome additional flavor to the record. This was especially evident in the live performances on the Elevation Tour, which took the song to another level, particularly with the extended coda guitar solo.

The record concludes with Grace, another maligned track here on the blue crack. I understand the common complaints that it's musically meandering and that some of the lyrics are not up-to-par, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with them. Musically, if you tune out the vocals and focus only on the instrumental, it's really a bubbly, atmospheric piece that feels like it could've been an outtake from the band's fourth LP, The Unforgettable Fire - I'm thinking specifically of something like Bass Trap or the instrumental portion of Promenade. I can see how some would think it is meandering, insofar as it is probably a minute or two too long. Lyrically, I suppose that are some lines that aren't worth defending, but I like the general sentiment of it, which is sort of a less euphoric, more meditative all-you-need-is-love type thing. I think "Grace makes beauty out of ugly things" is a nice thought to end a record on. It's not one of the great U2 ballads, but it's pleasant enough, and a calm, soothing way to end the record proper.

I say 'record proper', because The Ground Beneath Her Feet, originally on the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack, was a bonus track in some regions.

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Some people consider the track to be a part of the record because it was included in some regions, and some people don't because it seems to occupy a different sonic, perhaps even emotional, space than most of the record. I think both viewpoints are valid, but I've always considered it a part of the record, and according to this excerpt from the song's Wikipedia page, the band wanted it to be as well:



We don't know why it didn't end up on the record, but it seems like the band wanted it to be. In any case, I think it's a gorgeous track. Salman Rushdie's lyric is beautiful, as are the melodies, and the atmospherics and production are right out of The Unforgettable Fire or The Joshua Tree. Bono's vocal is appropriately restrained and hits, I feel, the perfect balance between not being too understated and not being too over-the-top. Perhaps more than anything else, the ending is just tremendous - the steel guitar solo and the 'my-oh-my' repititions gradually growing in intensity - going from being underneath the solo to being on top of it - are kind of hypnotizing, the combination just washes over the listener, and if the song were part of the record proper, its ending would be my favorite part of the whole record.

All That You Can't Leave Behind revived the band's career - especially in the United States - after it had been lagging in the mid-to-late 90s and gave them a momentum that carried them through much of the next decade. It was a massively successful record, both commercially and critically.

It sold twelve million copies worldwide, the fourth most of any U2 record behind The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, and Rattle And Hum, and its singles were all pretty successful. It was really the last time the band had multiple successful singles from one album - Despite the huge success of Vertigo, none of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb's other singles did all that much, No Line On The Horizon's singles were an unmitigated disaster, and Songs Of Innocence's singles haven't fared that much better so far.

Critically, the album was well reviewed and did exceptionally well at the Grammys. In 2001, Beautiful Day won Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, Song Of The Year, and Record Of The Year. and All That You Can't Leave Behind won Best Rock Album and was nominated for Album Of The Year, which it controversially lost to the surprise winner, the O'Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. In 2002, Elevation won Best Rock Performance BY A Duo Or Group With Vocals and was nominated for Best Rock Song, Stuck In A Moment won Song Of The Year and Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, and Walk On won Record Of The Year - making All That You Can't Leave Behind the only record ever to spawn two different winners of that award - and Best Rock Song. Finally, in 2003, Walk On was nominated for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals. All together, the record won nine Grammy awards.

Even though its successor, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb won almost as many, All That You Can't Leave Behind's achievement seems bigger, because the latter was sort of riding on the wave of the former's success - and the latter's Album Of The Year win was seen by some as a make-up for the former's loss in the same category - whereas the former's success was built completely on its own merit. To have every single released from the record win a Grammy, and to have all but one of them win multiple Grammys, is something special, and the band will probably never come close to replicating that feat. The record couldn't have been more successful, commercially and critically, and the band is still reaping the benefits of what it did from them.

It's ironic, then, that a lot of people within the die hard fanbase look down on the record. It might be partially due to the perception mentioned earlier of the record being the beginning of the "new" U2, but it's also often due simply to some people not liking the music. I can understand that if you loved what the band was doing in the 90s - as I did and do - that All That You Can't Leave Behind might not be up your ally, but I don't agree with the sentiment that the record is boring. On the contrary, I feel that this record has a vibrancy that much of their later work prior to Songs Of Innocence lacked. There is a warmth, and Earthiness, that permeates the record. Where much of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb feels sterile, overcooked, and like it's trying very hard, All That You Can't Leave Behind feels genuine, natural, and organic. There's an undeniable authenticity about it. In the lead-up to the record's release, Bono referred to it as 'titanium soul', and I think that rings true. Whether you like these songs or not, they don't have that artificial feeling that some of their subsequent songs arguably do.

And where No Line On The Horizon seemed like it didn't always know what it wanted to say, All That You Can't Leave Behind seemed to always know what it was about - questioning of faith(Peace On Earth, When I Look At The World), different aspects of aging(Kite, New York), perseverance(Stuck In A Moment, Walk On), and rejuvenation(Beautiful Day, Elevation).

Those themes would, of course, take on a whole new meaning after 9/11. Even though the record was released nearly a year before the attacks, many of the songs sound and read as though they could've been written after. It was kind of spooky how much the record resonated in the aftermath. That fact, and U2's role as the first band to resume touring in the United States after the attacks, as well as their much celebrated 2002 Superbowl halftime show performance, no doubt play a part in the way this record is remembered by the general public.

So, they kind of caught lightning in a bottle with All That You Can't Leave Behind, and it often felt like they were trying to re-create that magic with the following two records. But often, the more you try to create that kind of magic, the more elusive it becomes. It was a moment in time, and it gave birth a tremendously successful piece of work that meant a lot to a lot of people. And yes, for better or worse, they've never been the same band they used to be since this record was released. But then, they've never been the same band they were before Achtung Baby since that record was released, or the same band they were before The Joshua Tree since it was released. Bands evolve, bands grow, and sometimes bands lose motivation to be artistically groundbreaking or sonically exciting. when that happens, the band can either put their energy into the only thing left - an honest expression of something through the medium of songwriting - or they can manufacture empty-sounding attempts at staying relevant. U2 have done both to varying degrees of success in the years since All That You Can't Leave Behind, but I feel that that record was almost entirely the former.

So, here's to All That You Can't Leave Behind.

Congrats if you made it to the end of this.

I'll leave you with some video links from that era:

U2 - Beautiful Day (Official Music Video) - Beautiful Day video
- YouTube - Beautiful Day video v2
U2 - Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of - Stuck In A Moment video - European version
Couldn't find the American version of Stuck In A Moment
U2 - Elevation (Official Music Video) - Elevation video
U2, Walk On - Traduzida - Walk On video - partial, couldn't find the full version
U2 - Walk On (Official Music Video) - Walk On video - Brazilian version
- YouTube TRL - Beautiful Day, New York
U2 - Beautiful Day (My VH1 Music Awards) My VH1 Awards - Beautiful Day
U2 - Beautiful Day (Live at the 2000 europe music awards) 2000 MTV European Music Awards - Beautiful Day
- YouTube 2001 MTV Video Music Awards - Vanguard Clip, Elevation, stuck In A Moment
U2's Post Show Interview from 2001 VMAs 2001 MTV Video Music Awards Post-Show Interview
U2 Live Irving Plaza, New York (Full Concert) 2000 Full Irving Plaza show
U2 - Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of Live at BBC Radio One 23-10-2000 BBC Radio One - Stuck In A Moment
U2 - Beautiful Day - Top Of The Pops - 02.11.2000 BBC Top Of The Pops - Beautiful Day
U2 - Elevation - Top Of The Pops - 02.11.2000 BBC Top Of The Pops - Elevation
- YouTube 2001 Grammy Awards - Beautiful Day
- YouTube 2002 Grammy Awards - Walk On
Wanted to include the 2000 SNL performances, but they're not on youtube

I made it all the way through.

As someone who tends to write long posts myself, I want to say you did it far better than me!!

Great post.

I love ATYCLB though it's not my favorite.

For my money, SOI is the best thing they've done since AB by a long shot.

However, you did an EXCELLENT JOB of making the point that, regardless of one's personal opinion on this record, you cannot die its importance in the U2 catalog.

ATYCLB was everything they wanted and needed at the time, and there simply would not be U2 as we now know them without it.

Also, you mentioned 9/11 and the relevance to America. That can not be overstated.

Just an unbelievable time to be a U2 fan and what this album did, for the band and for the world, was truly phenomenal!
 
The album that got me into the band,they had always just been in the background for me. Weirdly it was the elevation video that got my attention,I thought it was cool!

The rest as they say is history,never looked back. Best band ever.
 
I became a U2 fan in 1995 as a 13 year old boy. HMTMKMKM caught my ear, and I began to think of them as more than just a band who had a couple albums in my Dads very small CD collection. I was so excited when POP came out and Popmart got in motion. Finally, MY FAVORITE BAND is going to be active again. But it was bittersweet. All the kids at my school would make snarky comments whenever I wore my Popmart t-shirt, and everytime I opened Rolling Stone it was another article about how Pop and Popmart fell below expectations, performance-wise. As a teenager, my finger was on the pulse of what was popular (even if I wasn't lol), and I could definitely tell U2 were not on anyone's radar in 1997.

That's why it was such a thrill to see U2 back on top in 2000. ATYCLB is a great record, it got me through a rough patch (you could say I hit an iceberg in my life). It was an exciting time to be a U2 fan. I cannot believe it's been 15 years. I'll never forget it, because I bought the album that morning before work, and I had to wait ALL DAY until my drive home to listen to it. I just read the liner notes all day in painful anticipation. I plan to listen to it in full on October 31st. Maybe I'll even buy it again, since I lost the CD and those precious liner notes.

Thanks for sharing those videos, I forgot about how exciting that promo tour was. I'll add this video, it was the first time I heard "Elevation".

 
Epic OP.

I have a theory about internet-era U2 fans, which is this: A lot of said fans' first 'rock' band -- after they go through the pop-star period of childhood & early-teen years -- is U2. U2 are sort-of like the Jesuits in that they get their hooks in a lot of young people when the young people are just on the cusp. For this reason, a lot of U2 fans of a certain age associate U2 with their 'maturation' and expect the band to be serious and 'deep'.

Therefore, when U2 decide to make a commercial-type single or release a song that has mainstream appeal, these U2 fans view it as a betrayal. I think ATYCLB suffers the most from this, as Internet-era music fans rejected it as their favorite band's attempt to sound pop.

For me, I'm on the fence with regards to the album: I can appreciate the really good songwriting and performances, and enjoy it. On the other hand, the production and mixing is so bad -- and yes, such a blatant attempt at a 'clean', bass-lite, vocals-high, radio-friendly sound -- that sometimes I can't stand it.

What's most significant about this album is not the actual music, strangely, but what the album itself represented. And what it represented is U2's conscious decision to become a 'veteran' band, instead of a contemporary band.

I was about to agree with you for the first time ever but no. U2 were the first band that took me from "oh yeah music is cool" to "woah music" and I was 14, and Hutdab had just come out. So I think your argument is completely wrong - it's not "internet-era" people who rejected it; without ATYCLB and HTDAAB I doubt I'd be here, it was long-time, pre-internet fans who rejected it.
 
I was about to agree with you for the first time ever but no. U2 were the first band that took me from "oh yeah music is cool" to "woah music" and I was 14, and Hutdab had just come out. So I think your argument is completely wrong - it's not "internet-era" people who rejected it; without ATYCLB and HTDAAB I doubt I'd be here, it was long-time, pre-internet fans who rejected it.

Agree 100%. I'm probably an "internet-era" person and I considered ATYCLB to be serious and deep in 2001, not pop music. Pop music was N*SYNC and all that crap; ATYCLB was the opposite of that!
 
I listened to those 30 second clips so much that I think it tainted my listening experience when it leaked. I still hear the clip segments when I listen.

Certainly their most Poppy effort. The 2nd half is too weak to get it out of the lower end of my album rankings. Stuck, IALW, and Walk On would be songs That would send me to the restroom during a concert. I actually prefer the album version of Elevation to the Tomb Raider Mix


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference

I don't like the 2nd half of the album either (everything after IALW).

Stuck, Walk On, and Kite are some of my personal favorites out of everything they've done in their career.

The choices they made for the actual singles were spot-on. After all this time I have to admit I have grown tired of BD but I can understand why they have to keep playing it live. It was their 2nd to last big "hit" (IMO Vertigo was the last one).
 
I've got many great memories of ATYCLB.

I remember:

-Hearing BD on the radio for the first time and absolutely loving it. (Then, of course, they played the shit out of it, but I still loved it. :wink:)

-Hearing the album before it was sold in stores. (My friend was able to download every song.)

-Buying the CD on the Friday before it was gonna go on sale the next Tuesday. (The record store that I used to frequent did this all the time, but we had to keep it on the downlow. Good times!)

-Having a designated VHS tape to record all of their TV appearances like MTV TRL, farmclub.com, SNL, etc.

-Seeing U2 5 times on the Elevation tour and, of course, purchasing the obligatory tour shirt. (Which I still wear today and thankfully still fits.)

2000/1 was a great time to be a U2 fan.
 
Apologies in advance for the length...

Fifteen years ago today, on October 9, 2000, U2 released the Beautiful Day single commercially, and later that month, on October 30, 2000, they released their tenth studio record from which Beautiful Day had been the first single, All That You Can't Leave Behind(so I'm doing this thread a bit early).

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Much has been written and said about this record in the fifteen years since its release, both good and bad. It garnered much critical acclaim upon its release, with Rolling Stone going as far as to call it the band's "third masterpiece" and ranking it #139 on their 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time," but there has been an enduring view of the record over time among many within the die-hard fanbase as a safe record, a retreat from the musical adventurousness that had characterized much of their earlier work in favor of chasing a relevance that was once a given.

It is difficult to talk about All That You Can't Leave Behind without talking about its predecessor, Pop, and the rapidly changing landscape of mainstream popular music that both were released in.

U2 had been one of many bands to rise to stardom on the wave of alternative rock that had been building steadily throughout the 80s before exploding in the early 90s, and their rise culminated with the release of one of their pantheon records, Achtung Baby, and the phenomenally successful and inventive Zoo TV tour in support of it and its sister record, Zooropa.

Between the end of that tour in the waning weeks of 1993 and the release of Pop in the Spring of 1997, the era of alternative rock had begun to fade. Grunge was over in the wake of the death of Kurt Cobain, the indefinite hiatus of Alice In Chains, and the breakup of Soundgarden. Aside from this, alternative rock was beginning to become over-saturated with post-grunge and pop-rock bands that were sounding less and less original.

At the same time, other forms of music were taking over the mainstream. Hip-hop had entered the mainstream at the end of the 80s and was on the brink of becoming the dominant genre in popular music. Electronic music that had been popular in Europe for years was experiencing a surge in popularity in North America. Pop music was in the midst of a huge comeback in the late 90s, after having taken a backseat for much of the decade, with the explosion of boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, and 98 Degrees, "pop princesses" such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, girl groups such as the Spice Girls, and by 1999, artists from the "Latin Explosion", led by Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, and Jennifer Lopez, among others.

On top of all of this, as the popularity of alternative rock began to wane, a new form of rock music began to take its place in the mainstream, namely the rock-rap hybrid nu-metal, led by Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, and the like.

And so Pop - a record in which the band had experimented with dance beats, and techno and electronic sounds - was released in the Spring of 1997, and maybe because despite said experimentation it was still an alternative rock record at its core at a time when the masses didn't want that so much anymore, or maybe because even with said experimentation it still wasn't techno or electronic enough for true fans of those genres, or maybe because it didn't sound enough like U2, or maybe because of some combination of the above, the record just didn't happen in the U.S. It was fairly successful internationally, as was the tour(after a rocky start in the States), but in America, where U2 have always wanted to be liked, the record flopped.

By the time the Popmart tour concluded in the Spring of 1998, the band were at a crossroads. They were heading towards their 40s and, perhaps for the first time in light of the reception Pop and Popmart got, facing their mortality as a commercially viable band, at least with regards to future studio recordings. This was visible in their sudden rash of retrospective releases - The Best Of 1980-1990 in 1998, and a VH1 Legends episode as well as a Classic Albums DVD about The Joshua Tree in 1999 - after they had never really looked backward at all in their career up to that point.

To illustrate how dramatically the perception of U2 had changed among young people and teens in just a few short years, I'll share an anecdote from my own life. In the fall of 1999, a year and a half after the end of Popmart and a year before Beautiful Day and All That You Can't Leave Behind would hit, I was starting my freshman year of high school. On one of the first days, in homeroom, the teacher had each student partner up with the student next to him or her and conduct a brief interview through which they would learn basic facts about each other and then share it with the class. It was a "getting to know each other" type of exercise. So, one of the facts my partner learned about me and subsequently shared with the class was that my favorite band was U2. The teacher, who I'm guessing was probably in her mid-to-late 30s at the time, expressed surprise at this, and shared that she loved U2 as well, but that she would've thought they were old men and not cool as far as we(the kids) were concerned(I'm paraphrasing here, I don't remember her exact words), and some other kid in the class piped up, 'they are'. They were yesterday's news as far as many fourteen/fifteen/sixteen-year-olds in 1999 were concerned.

They were about to transition from being superstars to being legends and elder statesmen of a dying genre, and they had to figure out what that meant. Were they going to continue to make a kind of music the masses didn't necessarily have an appetite for anymore, or were they going to adapt their brand of anthemic rock music to a music scene that was hungry for shiny pop hooks?

At the same time, after a decade of intense experimentation with varying levels of success, and especially after the frustrations of making Pop and never being able to make it live up to the vision they had, I think they really were burnt out on making those types of records. I think they were genuine in their desire to get back to being "four guys in a room" and sincere in their desire to move away from the sonic extravaganzas of the 90s and toward a more basic, organic approach to making records that really focused on the craft of songwriting.

So I think where they were in terms of their future commercial viability and where they were in terms of the artistic direction they wanted to go in intersected. I'm not saying that would necessarily be the case for subsequent records, but I think it was when they made this record in 1999 and 2000.

Which brings us to the record itself. It's not the easiest thing to give the record a review based only on its own merits, because in hindsight, many see it as not only a record, but as the unequivocal line between "old" U2 and "new" U2. Between the Bono who "didn't need the Pop kids" and the eternally-glasses-wearing, platitude-generating near-caricature who has often seemed to spend as much time being a social activist and shaking hands with politicians as he does making music. Between the Edge who made a name for himself as one of the influential rock guitarists of his generation through his desire to push the boundaries of how a guitar could literally sound and the Edge who has too often seemed to be imitating himself. Between the U2 who were trying, successfully, to secure their place in the rock pantheon with the Beatles and the Stones, and the U2 who are trying to stay on the charts with whoever today's chart-toppers are. Between the U2 who were alternative rock gods and the U2 who, as one writer put it, "settled for being Generation X's Rolling Stones."

I'm not sure all of that is entirely fair, but it is the perception among many fans. But difficult as it is to evaluate the record without letting its pivotal slot in the U2 catalog color said evaluation, I'm going to try. It's probably going to veer towards being too positive for some of you, because I enjoy the record more than some of you, but I'll try to remain objective.

I remember the first time I heard any of the record - U2.com was just about to launch for the first time prior to the record's release, and they were going to release a 30-second clip of one song per day or per week or something like that, I don't remember exactly, but it turned out they had put all the files up at the same time, and somebody figured it out, so everybody ended up having 30-second clips of all of the songs right away. I remember enjoying every single clip and looking forward to the record - which was my first 'new' U2 record as fan, although I got into the band a couple years earlier with their back catalog - with much anticipation. I still have those files. I also remember coming home from school on release day to find the CD waiting for me, and listening to it over and over.

So much has been said about the first four tracks, the singles, the big four, that I won't delve too deeply into them, but nontheless...

The album starts with Beautiful Day, the single that single-handedly resuscitated their career.

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It is driven by an infectious bassline and soaring chorus and, like much of the album, represents a return to that straight-ahead anthemic sound that made U2 superstars in the first place, but with a poppier sensibility than ever before. The electronic sounds that had dominated much of their 90s work weren't gone, but were now only in a complimentary role. I remember the first night I heard Beautiful Day back in the fall of 2000. I had downloaded an mp3 of it shortly after it was released to radio, and I listened to it over and over. All these years later, when it has become as much of a warhorse as Pride(In The Name Of Love) or Where The Streets Have No Name or any number of others, I often find myself trying to hear the song the way I heard it that night and in the weeks that followed. It's not always easy to hear it that way anymore, but sometimes, if I'm in the right mood, I can. Because for as played out as it's become, it's still a pretty good song. The aforementioned bassline is as catchy as it ever was, I've always liked the stretched out 'da-a-a-ay, da-a-a-ay' at the end of the middle 8, and the 'what you don't have you don't need it now' lines at the end have always been my favorite part of the song(Bono's execution of them is one of the most 'rock' moments on the record, for my money), just to name a few of the good things about it. There's no denying it's a classic U2 track.

The single's b-sides are Always, an early version of what would become Beautiful Day, and Summer Rain, a melodic acoustic number.

Following Beautiful Day is Stuck In A Moment, the mid-tempo ballad about INXS frontman Michael Hutchence's suicide.

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For some, the song was and is too saccharine(perhaps less so in the subsequent acoustic version) for a band that had put out a song like Mofo just three and a half years earlier, but I've always liked it. The production on the album version might be a bit too sugary for some, but I think it's a warm, catchy, soulful melody, and Edge's vocal coda might be one the band's greatest pure pop moments.

The single's b-side(which also appeared as a b-side for Walk On) was Big Girls Are Best, a lightweight, poppy rocker that had its origins in the Pop sessions.

Elevation is one of the few 'rock' tracks on the record, and is the one that most evokes the sonic terrain of their 90s work, even if it isn't nearly as intricate or dense or lyrically substantial as the best of said 90s work.

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It's not near their greatest rock songs, but it is is a fun, catchy, easily digestible pop-rock song that manages to be so without sounding pedestrian. As a caveat, I will add that many probably agree that the single, AKA "Tomb Raider" mix is superior to the album version, as it has more "umph", for lack of a better term, to it than the album version, and more closely resembles the full-band live arrangement, which was a great opener for the Elevation tour and remains a live staple to this day(although there were some less popular live arrangements of it on the Vertigo tour and maybe even the 360 tour).

In the record's fourth slot is Walk On, a feel-good mid-tempo anthem of perseverance built on a big, warm, shiny, happy guitar riff and melody.

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Although this kind of guitar riff and melody would sound perhaps stale and derivative when used in tracks on subsequent U2 records, there's something fresh and genuine about it on this track. When I say 'feel-good', I mean it - it's hard not to have a smile on your face when the guitar kicks in at the beginning of the track. It's a crowd-pleasing moment, as is the huge sing-along chorus and the equally huge sing-along coda with its 'all that you [fill in the blank]' repetitions - arguably an homage to the Pink Floyd track Eclipse(although when you think about bands U2 might pay homage to, Pink Floyd isn't exactly at the top of the list).

The song is ostensibly about Aung San Suu Kyi, but it can really be about walking on after any difficult event or time in one's life, and the universality of the sentiment is no doubt part of what made the single a success.

I've long felt that the big four of All That You Can't Leave Behind ought to be the big five, and that the fifth one should be the record's actual fifth track, closing out its first side, Kite. I believe it is as good a ballad as any the band have recorded in the twenty-first century and can stand respectably with some of their classic ballads. Musically, it's not terribly original for the band, as it would fit right in with some of their 80s ballads, but it's so well executed that it doesn't matter. The chorus manages the feat of being extremely catchy without being shallow or insubstantial or cheesy. The song's lyric is an eminently relatable one about aging, loss, and the passage of time, and it's sung in an atmosphere that is appropriately bittersweet and dense without being too overwrought, carried by some heart-string-pulling guitar melodies. A great track that got even better live on the Vertigo tour several years later.

The record's second side starts with In A Little While, which has received much flack from the die-hard fanbase. There was always a faction that found it to be boring, but the ire for it intensified in 2009 when the band started playing it regularly on the 360 tour, to the chagrin of die-hards who felt that there were too many better songs they could be playing to waste a slot on it(the song took on additional meaning for the band, and Bono in particular, when it became the last song Joey Ramone heard before he died). I personally have never gotten the hate for it. I don't find it boring at all. I think it has an infectious groove, and that Bono's flawed, raspy vocal, for all the criticism it's received, actually adds some emotional heft to the song in the same way his tired, subtly imperfect vocal adds to the studio recording of One. The cracks in his voice add a certain humanity to the track. Lyrically, it's not earth-shattering, but it does contain one of my favorite lyrical passages of twenty-first century U2:

"A man dreams one day to fly
A man takes a rocket ship into the sky
He lives on a star that's dying in the night
He follows in the trail, the scatter of light"

I think it's as concise a statement of where Bono felt he and the band were, and to some degree still are, as a band, as you're likely to find, and I think it's pretty poetic too. They felt like they were on a dying star when they made this record, and I think that informs much about it. I think they've been following in the trail, the scatter of light, in varying degrees ever since, particularly with How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb and No Line On The Horizon.

Wild Honey is a light-weight acoustic ballad that for some reason is the subject of much scorn within the fanbase. Yes, lyrically it is silly(although there is something compelling about "if you go there, go with me"), but musically, all I hear is a really warm, joyous melody that it's hard not to sing along to. It's one of the very few times in the last fifteen years when I'd say the band sounded truly joyful.

Peace On Earth is a song I've sort of changed my opinion on just in the last few days I've been listening to the record while writing this. Musically, it's kind of placid, and that acts to cloak the hurt and anger in the lyrics. Indeed, Bono has called the song 'as bitter and as angry a song as U2 have ever written'. It was written after the Omagh bombing, about which Bono has said, 'the closest I ever came to a crisis of faith happened after that'. So the lyric is really an angry eye-roll at the notion of peace on Earth and an angry interrogation of faith.

There has been some criticism of some of the lyrics in the verses, especially the third verse with its 'Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda/There lives are bigger than any big idea' couplet, both for being a bit too heart-on-sleeve and for being a bit of a forced rhyme, but there are also good moments, such as "and you become a monster/so the monster will not break you', which I think is something that does happen. I think the chorus lyrics are actually quite effective at portraying the pain and loss of faith in the aftermath of tragedy - i.e. "to tell the ones who hear no sound/whose sons are living in the ground/peace on Earth", "She never got to say goodbye/to see the color in his eyes/now he's in the dirt/peace on Earth", "Jesus sing a song you wrote/the words are sticking in my throat/peace on Earth", etc. Musically, the chorus is melodically and, especially, rhythmically catchy, without being too bright for its lyrical content. I never disliked the song - I even liked it in the early days of the record - but it was always one of the tracks I came back to least, in no small measure because it takes a bit too long for the song to really get going, and the vocal melody, while pleasant enough, isn't one that really grabs the listener(particularly in the verses), but it's re-growing on me at the moment.

I've always felt that When I Look At The World is an under-appreciated track, and overlooked when people talk about the second side of All That You Can't Leave Behind being weak. All throughout, it is driven by a bubbly guitar tone that is at once inviting and melancholy. The lyric is, as Bono put it, "written from the point of view of someone who is having a crisis of faith looking at someone who has built their house upon the rock," and I think it's one of the stronger lyrics on the record, particularly the verse

"When the night is someone else's
and you're trying to get some sleep
when your thoughts are too expensive
to ever want to keep"

The song builds up to a bridge that takes flight, first with my favorite guitar solo on the record - a soaring yet bittersweet melody that sounds like something you might hear on an organ in a church or something - and then with perhaps Bono's most impassioned vocal on the record in which he says "I can't wait/any longer/I can't wait/till I'm stronger/I can't wait/any longer/to see what you see/when you look at the world." The lyrical tone of the song up to this point is of a person who is unable to believe but who perhaps wishes they could, and that sentiment climaxes in this bridge. I think it's interesting that once this bridge ends, the final verse changes the tone to that of a person who is unable to believe and who doesn't want to anymore, with the very bitter lyric

"I'm in the waiting room
I can't see for the smoke
I think of you and your holy book
while the rest of us choke"

only to kind of revert to the first tone with the closing lines

"tell me tell me, what do you see?
tell me tell me, what's wrong with me?"

I think that little back-and-forth in lyrical tone is an interesting illustration of the sort of conflict that can arise in someone who is struggling with their faith, as if the speaker isn't sure they have admiration or contempt for those who do believe without question.

An underrated track, and it's a shame Edge "forgot how to play it" and thus couldn't play it live.

New York continues the tradition, started with Exit, Acrobat, and Please, of the penultimate track of a record being a dark, brooding rocker. It is somewhat divisive among fans, with some thinking it is underrated and under-appreciated, and some thinking it is boring and clunky. I think it's a solid track, with musically claustrophic, lyrically paranoid verses that explode into a cathartic chorus with a big riff and soaring vocal. The juxtaposition between the verses and the choruses works well to these ears. The track arguably shares some musical territory with the band's early sound - it almost sounds like it could've been a track on their third LP, War - and that adds a welcome additional flavor to the record. This was especially evident in the live performances on the Elevation Tour, which took the song to another level, particularly with the extended coda guitar solo.

The record concludes with Grace, another maligned track here on the blue crack. I understand the common complaints that it's musically meandering and that some of the lyrics are not up-to-par, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with them. Musically, if you tune out the vocals and focus only on the instrumental, it's really a bubbly, atmospheric piece that feels like it could've been an outtake from the band's fourth LP, The Unforgettable Fire - I'm thinking specifically of something like Bass Trap or the instrumental portion of Promenade. I can see how some would think it is meandering, insofar as it is probably a minute or two too long. Lyrically, I suppose that are some lines that aren't worth defending, but I like the general sentiment of it, which is sort of a less euphoric, more meditative all-you-need-is-love type thing. I think "Grace makes beauty out of ugly things" is a nice thought to end a record on. It's not one of the great U2 ballads, but it's pleasant enough, and a calm, soothing way to end the record proper.

I say 'record proper', because The Ground Beneath Her Feet, originally on the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack, was a bonus track in some regions.

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Some people consider the track to be a part of the record because it was included in some regions, and some people don't because it seems to occupy a different sonic, perhaps even emotional, space than most of the record. I think both viewpoints are valid, but I've always considered it a part of the record, and according to this excerpt from the song's Wikipedia page, the band wanted it to be as well:



We don't know why it didn't end up on the record, but it seems like the band wanted it to be. In any case, I think it's a gorgeous track. Salman Rushdie's lyric is beautiful, as are the melodies, and the atmospherics and production are right out of The Unforgettable Fire or The Joshua Tree. Bono's vocal is appropriately restrained and hits, I feel, the perfect balance between not being too understated and not being too over-the-top. Perhaps more than anything else, the ending is just tremendous - the steel guitar solo and the 'my-oh-my' repititions gradually growing in intensity - going from being underneath the solo to being on top of it - are kind of hypnotizing, the combination just washes over the listener, and if the song were part of the record proper, its ending would be my favorite part of the whole record.

All That You Can't Leave Behind revived the band's career - especially in the United States - after it had been lagging in the mid-to-late 90s and gave them a momentum that carried them through much of the next decade. It was a massively successful record, both commercially and critically.

It sold twelve million copies worldwide, the fourth most of any U2 record behind The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, and Rattle And Hum, and its singles were all pretty successful. It was really the last time the band had multiple successful singles from one album - Despite the huge success of Vertigo, none of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb's other singles did all that much, No Line On The Horizon's singles were an unmitigated disaster, and Songs Of Innocence's singles haven't fared that much better so far.

Critically, the album was well reviewed and did exceptionally well at the Grammys. In 2001, Beautiful Day won Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, Song Of The Year, and Record Of The Year. and All That You Can't Leave Behind won Best Rock Album and was nominated for Album Of The Year, which it controversially lost to the surprise winner, the O'Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. In 2002, Elevation won Best Rock Performance BY A Duo Or Group With Vocals and was nominated for Best Rock Song, Stuck In A Moment won Song Of The Year and Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals, and Walk On won Record Of The Year - making All That You Can't Leave Behind the only record ever to spawn two different winners of that award - and Best Rock Song. Finally, in 2003, Walk On was nominated for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals. All together, the record won nine Grammy awards.

Even though its successor, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb won almost as many, All That You Can't Leave Behind's achievement seems bigger, because the latter was sort of riding on the wave of the former's success - and the latter's Album Of The Year win was seen by some as a make-up for the former's loss in the same category - whereas the former's success was built completely on its own merit. To have every single released from the record win a Grammy, and to have all but one of them win multiple Grammys, is something special, and the band will probably never come close to replicating that feat. The record couldn't have been more successful, commercially and critically, and the band is still reaping the benefits of what it did from them.

It's ironic, then, that a lot of people within the die hard fanbase look down on the record. It might be partially due to the perception mentioned earlier of the record being the beginning of the "new" U2, but it's also often due simply to some people not liking the music. I can understand that if you loved what the band was doing in the 90s - as I did and do - that All That You Can't Leave Behind might not be up your ally, but I don't agree with the sentiment that the record is boring. On the contrary, I feel that this record has a vibrancy that much of their later work prior to Songs Of Innocence lacked. There is a warmth, and Earthiness, that permeates the record. Where much of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb feels sterile, overcooked, and like it's trying very hard, All That You Can't Leave Behind feels genuine, natural, and organic. There's an undeniable authenticity about it. In the lead-up to the record's release, Bono referred to it as 'titanium soul', and I think that rings true. Whether you like these songs or not, they don't have that artificial feeling that some of their subsequent songs arguably do.

And where No Line On The Horizon seemed like it didn't always know what it wanted to say, All That You Can't Leave Behind seemed to always know what it was about - questioning of faith(Peace On Earth, When I Look At The World), different aspects of aging(Kite, New York), perseverance(Stuck In A Moment, Walk On), and rejuvenation(Beautiful Day, Elevation).

Those themes would, of course, take on a whole new meaning after 9/11. Even though the record was released nearly a year before the attacks, many of the songs sound and read as though they could've been written after. It was kind of spooky how much the record resonated in the aftermath. That fact, and U2's role as the first band to resume touring in the United States after the attacks, as well as their much celebrated 2002 Superbowl halftime show performance, no doubt play a part in the way this record is remembered by the general public.

So, they kind of caught lightning in a bottle with All That You Can't Leave Behind, and it often felt like they were trying to re-create that magic with the following two records. But often, the more you try to create that kind of magic, the more elusive it becomes. It was a moment in time, and it gave birth a tremendously successful piece of work that meant a lot to a lot of people. And yes, for better or worse, they've never been the same band they used to be since this record was released. But then, they've never been the same band they were before Achtung Baby since that record was released, or the same band they were before The Joshua Tree since it was released. Bands evolve, bands grow, and sometimes bands lose motivation to be artistically groundbreaking or sonically exciting. when that happens, the band can either put their energy into the only thing left - an honest expression of something through the medium of songwriting - or they can manufacture empty-sounding attempts at staying relevant. U2 have done both to varying degrees of success in the years since All That You Can't Leave Behind, but I feel that that record was almost entirely the former.

So, here's to All That You Can't Leave Behind.

Congrats if you made it to the end of this.

I'll leave you with some video links from that era:

U2 - Beautiful Day (Official Music Video) - Beautiful Day video
- YouTube - Beautiful Day video v2
U2 - Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of - Stuck In A Moment video - European version
Couldn't find the American version of Stuck In A Moment
U2 - Elevation (Official Music Video) - Elevation video
U2, Walk On - Traduzida - Walk On video - partial, couldn't find the full version
U2 - Walk On (Official Music Video) - Walk On video - Brazilian version
- YouTube TRL - Beautiful Day, New York
U2 - Beautiful Day (My VH1 Music Awards) My VH1 Awards - Beautiful Day
U2 - Beautiful Day (Live at the 2000 europe music awards) 2000 MTV European Music Awards - Beautiful Day
- YouTube 2001 MTV Video Music Awards - Vanguard Clip, Elevation, stuck In A Moment
U2's Post Show Interview from 2001 VMAs 2001 MTV Video Music Awards Post-Show Interview
U2 Live Irving Plaza, New York (Full Concert) 2000 Full Irving Plaza show
U2 - Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of Live at BBC Radio One 23-10-2000 BBC Radio One - Stuck In A Moment
U2 - Beautiful Day - Top Of The Pops - 02.11.2000 BBC Top Of The Pops - Beautiful Day
U2 - Elevation - Top Of The Pops - 02.11.2000 BBC Top Of The Pops - Elevation
- YouTube 2001 Grammy Awards - Beautiful Day
- YouTube 2002 Grammy Awards - Walk On
Wanted to include the 2000 SNL performances, but they're not on youtube

Good post.
 
To me All That You Can't Leave Behind was the culmination of everything U2 had ever done to that point. I don't buy it as the "ehrmagahd they're trying to be mainstream" sell out as many around these parts think, for whatever reason.

Was it a pullback from the experimentation of the late 90s? Of course. But it still didn't fit the era. It may have gotten them mainstream again, and it may sound mainstream now in retrospect, but it was not mainstream THEN.

It was a mix of all the various sounds and eras they've used throughout their history all loaded into one. And it saved their careers.

Sent from my SM-N920T using U2 Interference mobile app
 
I was about to agree with you for the first time ever but no. U2 were the first band that took me from "oh yeah music is cool" to "woah music" and I was 14, and Hutdab had just come out. So I think your argument is completely wrong - it's not "internet-era" people who rejected it; without ATYCLB and HTDAAB I doubt I'd be here, it was long-time, pre-internet fans who rejected it.


These sentiments about both ATYCLB and Bomb :love: are my exact experience. Early 90's kid? I think I was 13 . :D

Either way. The Elevation tour DVD is what took my heart over for good. HTDAAB sealed the deal for me. I would not be here without 00's U2.
Only people I've heard dissing are people who use the "They went shite after Joshua Tree" argument.:lmao:
 
These sentiments about both ATYCLB and Bomb :love: are my exact experience. Early 90's kid? I think I was 13 . :D

Either way. The Elevation tour DVD is what took my heart over for good. HTDAAB sealed the deal for me. I would not be here without 00's U2.
Only people I've heard dissing are people who use the "They went shite after Joshua Tree" argument.:lmao:

I've come back around to HTDAAB lately and feel it's a great album, one of their stronger albums actually.
 
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