But Beautiful Day wasn’t quite made quotidian by overuse. This ubiquity came close to robbing the song of its energy. Most memorably, it was the theme to ITV’s Premier League coverage. It cropped up during the 2000 Olympics the Labour Party used it so did Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Here are four minutes, eight seconds of rising crescendos, swelling harmonies and glorious hooks, all working together to herald the new millennium with what was, at first hearing, swivel-eyed optimism. Here, months into the new century, the record opened with the euphoric Beautiful Day, a song which looked for redemption andpurpose within an almost ludicrously widescreen view of the Earth and of humanity. The band have never been shy of making grand statements, and this record – just re-released in boxset formats – was them at their most strident. Twenty years ago, in October 2000, U2 released the LP All That You Can’t Leave Behind (ATYCLB).
#STUCK IN A MOMENT U2 PLUS#
One consequence of this is that the band’s music doesn’t always get the critical attention it deserves, especially in this century.Īnd this is unfair, because there have been times over the last 30 or so years when U2’s music caught the historical moment with almost unrivalled clarity.įrom the mid-1980s, so much of U2’s music has been about that post-ideological, pre-populist age of an interconnected globe of relaxed borders, migration, international travel and dynamic, interconnected cities – plus the unease that has gone with people trying to find their place in this new ‘open’ world.Īs such, U2 have caught those years – from the ending of the Cold War up until the rise of populism – as well as any other artist, writer, filmmaker that I can think of. They are often loathed for their arena-filling success, for their business practices and for Bono’s hectoring.Īnd this is where the band’s reputation tends to get stuck, somewhere between being a record-breaking, commercial operation, and Bono-hate. The critical mauling and public grumbling that U2 got for that iTunes giveaway isn’t untypical of how the band is often regarded, especially in the UK. Even their worst-selling LP, 2014’s Songs of Innocence, a record given away on iTunes (whether you wanted it or not – much to the annoyance of many), ended up getting a silver disc.
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