All That You Can't Leave Behind by U2
Throughout the 1990s, U2 experimented with alternative rock and electronic dance music, culminating with their 1997 album Pop and the accompanying PopMart Tour. Guitarist The Edge said that with Pop, the band had "taken the deconstruction of the rock 'n' roll band format to its absolute 'nth degree." However, following the poor reception to the album and tour, the band wished to return to song arrangements that consisted almost entirely of guitar, bass, and drums, and to quickly regroup in the studio after the tour. They reunited with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who also produced their albums The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. Although the band wanted to develop material before they entered the recording studio, Eno convinced them to write material quickly in the studio. For three weeks in late 1998, U2, Eno, and Lanois recorded demos in Hanover Quay Studios. One of the few quality ideas that stemmed from these brief sessions was the song "Kite". Lead singer Bono's vocals inspired everyone in the studio, particularly after he had been suffering from vocal problems for the previous few years. U2 thought they would have a new record completed in time for 1999. After the band's brief demo sessions, The Edge worked alone on song ideas before the band reunited at Hanover Quays. They recorded with the mentality of a "band in a room playing together", an approach that led to the album's more stripped-down sound. Bono's involvement in the Jubilee 2000 campaign prevented him from dedicating all of his time to the album's recording, something Eno thought was a distraction. There was also a two-month break in the sessions when Bono collaborated with Lanois and Hal Wilner on the Million Dollar Hotel film soundtrack. The band had thought they could complete the album for 1999, but the sessions ran long, with band members' conflicting schedules playing a large part in the delay. U2 did not want to put a deadline on completing the album after their experience with Pop, which had to be rushed to completion into order to meet the deadline set by their pre-booked PopMart Tour. In the summer 1999, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. bought houses in the South of France, in order to be near Bono and The Edge's homes so they could have a place to both "work and play". The band have said that All That You Can't Leave Behind was an album that acknowledged the band's past. For example, there was a big debate amongst the band members during the writing and recording of "Beautiful Day"; The Edge was playing with a guitar tone that he hadn't used much since their 1983 album War and the band wanted something more forward-looking. The Edge won out and the sound made it into the final studio version of the song. Additionally, although the record was described as "a return to the traditional U2 sound", many songs were complex and retained elements of the band's 1990s experimenting; "Beautiful Day" features an electronic drum beat, and the song's intro features an "electronification of the [chorus] chords with a beat box and a string part"; "New York" came together when the band members were away at a meeting and Lanois and Eno were playing around with a drum loop that drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. had recorded. The album's recording wrapped up in 2000.
The members of U2 headed into the 2000s in the midst of an existential crisis—not to mention a musical one. The band had both overwhelmed <i>and</i> underwhelmed fans with 1997’s would-be future-disco record <i>Pop</i>. Around the same time, the group’s PopMart tour was earning millions of dollars, but few accolades. Suddenly, the group’s cool cred was in doubt. Perhaps this was inevitable: After all, lead singer Bono had spent the decade simultaneously playing up and poking fun at rock ’n’ roll ludicrousness—only for him and his bandmates to share the stage with a giant, sporadically malfunctioning lemon. Bono had started the decade as a jokester, and ended it as a punchline. <i>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</i> was a self-conscious corrective—the sound of a band turning down the noise, throwing out the glittery props and re-fashioning the old-school U2 sound into something more stripped-away and direct. To some, <i>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</i> was a bold return; to others, a bit of a retreat. Either way, it sold a gazillion copies, and erased any doubt of U2’s raw abilities (while also seemingly wiping clean any collective cultural memory of PopMart). U2 makes its intentions for <i>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</i> clear from the get-go with the opening track: “Beautiful Day”, a monstrous, undeniable bit of uplift, featuring an atomic guitar riff the Edge apparently recorded while strapped to a jumbo jet, and a gorgeous mid-song harmonic breakdown. “Beautiful Day” is so on-the-nose, so perfectly <i>U2</i>, that everyone forgave its sheer U2-ness. And the song demonstrated what 21st-century commercial rock could (and would) sound like in the years ahead: loud, proud and only <i>slightly</i> ridiculous. That was certainly the mantra behind the album’s <i>other</i> smash-hit anthem, “Elevation”, a trampolining assortment of swan-diving guitars and sky-high vocals that manages to answer the age-old question: “Can a rock song rhyme the words ‘mole’, ‘hole’ and ‘soul’, and still retain its integrity?” (The answer: Yes, but only in this instance.) But the roof-raising tracks on <i>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</i> are paired with (slightly) quieter, more carefully layered numbers. The reassuring ballad “Walk On” finds Bono doing what he does best as a lyricist—namely, taking off his shades, looking listeners directly in the eye, and giving them what feels like a one-on-one heart-to-heart. And the lovely “In a Little While”, a low-key bit of soul-searching, is one of the band’s most effectively pared-down numbers (it became a favourite of Joey Ramone in his final days). Still: <i>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</i> didn’t top the charts because of such quieter moments. This is an album custom-made for beautiful days, and no song sums up its powers greater than “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”, a sumptuous, gospel-tinged heartbreaker that features a sing-along chorus to which even the most cynical U2 listener will eventually succumb. Is that song—much like the rest of <i>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</i>—a little too needy, too tidy, a little too <i>desperate</i> to be embraced? Sure. But after U2’s struggles in the late ’90s, at least this album—and its success—reminded the band members why they’d been so huge in the first place. Better to be stuck in a moment you can’t get out of than to be stuck inside a giant lemon.
