(Credits: Spotify)
Tue 5 August 2025 23:00, UK
Some of the best bands in the world only have a limited window to make their classics.
As much as people might like their favourite bands to stick around forever, there’s no telling whether their moment in the sun is going to continue for decades at a time or only stick around for one summer before everyone moves on to something else. And while Bono was more than happy to have musical masterworks under his belt in U2, he felt that some of their best material didn’t come until years down the road.
After all, some of the best songwriters only get that way from refining their talents, and after years in the spotlight, the Irish legends had put themselves through their paces more than a few times. There were occasional moments where one of their experiments didn’t work as well, but by the time they got to The Joshua Tree, they became the kind of larger-than-life rock band that the 1990s would ultimately stomp out. And yet, Achtung Baby is still heralded as one of the finest albums because of how different it is.
Compared to their rock and roll past, the band were more than happy to play around with their traditional way of making records. They had taken their cues from people like Brian Eno, so even if they had a winning formula, it wasn’t out of the question to erase everything and start again from scratch if they wanted to.
But experimentation can only take you so far, and by the time Pop happened, the band seemed to become a caricature of themselves. Bono could still sing, and The Edge came up with some brilliant guitar parts, but hearing them try on their best Chemical Brothers impression did nothing to endear them to their longtime fans. Maybe the 1990s were as good a time for them to bow out, but Bono knew that music was going to be the thing that healed them in the long run.
And listening to All That You Can’t Leave Behind, they seemed to channel the sound that made them famous all over again. The Joshua Tree was a distant memory, but songs like ‘Beautiful Day’ sound like that same band with a bit more life experience under their belts, especially when they make touching ballads like ‘Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’.
Even when promoting the follow-up, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, Bono still claimed that All That You Can’t Leave Behind couldn’t be beat, saying, “On All That You Can’t Leave Behind, I think we had the best collection of songs. I don’t think that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts, in the way that The Joshua Tree had some songs that weren’t quite as good, but the overall feeling of that album was that it takes you over.”
While that kind of immersion is all up to the listener, How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb takes every one of those tropes and expands on them even more. ‘Beautiful Day’ was a soft reboot for U2’s sound in many respects, but songs like ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’ gave everyone the feeling that they might be able to enter the new millennium and remain one of the best voices in rock and roll.
Although the band have continued to push boundaries and occasionally piss off their fans by making dumb moves, All That You Can’t Leave Behind feels more like a statement nowadays than a proper album. U2 were not going to experiment for the hell of it anymore, and all it took was the right songs to bring them back down to Earth.
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