The 2000 album The Edge called U2’s creative peak: “I’m so blown away by them”
U2 were never a band that were trying to be stagnant for the rest of their career.
They found their sound in the 1980s and milked it for all it was worth, but it wasn’t going to make sense for them to keep making the same song every single time they went into the studio. All of them wanted the chance to experiment with different sounds whenever they could, and The Edge could tell when they had crossed a certain threshold when they got to work on one of their later records.
Because as much as any band likes to put the best songs that they can out, it gets a lot harder to find inspiration when you have a few records under your belt. Anyone would be wondering if they still had something to say after years of going into the studio, and since U2 had spent most of their time making the most of every record, Pop was the first time where it felt like their inspiration failed them a little bit. The songs were still decent, but it felt like they had made an album to promote a tour instead of the other way around.
But can you really blame them? The ZooTV tour is still one of the biggest spectacles that the rock and roll world has ever seen, and whenever someone went to the show, it was as much about the spectacle as it was about the actual music. That was all well and good, but The Edge wanted to remind everyone that U2 were still one of the best rock and roll bands that the world had ever seen.
And like any good rock and roll act, everything starts with finding the right songs. The band had been through so many experiments that it was getting more difficult for some of their tunes to come naturally, but after reconnecting with Daniel Lanois on All That You Can’t Leave Behind, it felt like they had rediscovered what made them want to play in the first place. The songs weren’t garage rock by any means, but you could feel them getting back to basics just a little bit.
The songs still sounded as polished as ever, but a lot of what Bono was talking about had the kind of heart that most people had forgotten about. The Irish legends had spent most of the past decade trying so hard to be ironic, so the most natural thing that they could have done afterwards was make songs that had their heart on their sleeve again, like on ‘Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’.
You can feel that they were inspired again, and The Edge felt that they had finally hit their creative stride for the first time in years, saying, “I think this particular album was a creative high-tide mark for us because of what built up before we went into the studio. Some of the outtakes from All That You Can’t Leave Behind, I’m so blown away by them. You tend to forget those songs. They’re not in your live set. They’re not played on radio. But going back and hearing some of them you realize, ‘Wow, that almost made the album. Maybe that should have made the album!’”
Then again, it’s not like the record is a fireworks show. This is one of the more basic albums that the band has ever made, and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb does have a few more immediate hooks on it, but compared to the last few records that were about making bold musical creations, hearing them get back to sounding like themselves again was all that fans could have asked for.
They had spent years dealing with tunes like ‘Discotheque’, and while many of their artsy tunes worked wonders on the charts, All That You Can’t Leave Behind was the sound of a band slowly falling in love with working in the studio. That initial shine hadn’t worn off in the slightest, and they were more than willing to take a chance on tunes that didn’t exactly have to be too out there.
