The song that saved Bono’s voice: “My voice returned at that moment”
The pressure always falls on the singer’s shoulders when recording any song. No matter how well people can hum the guitar riffs, a tune becomes their all-time favourite because of how much they relate to the lyrics or are blown away by the vocal performance at the heart of everything. Bono would be the first to admit that some U2 songs should have been taken back, but he thought that his vocal cords were re-ignited the minute he started working on the song ‘Kite’.
Then again, anyone would have appreciated it if the frontman had sounded at least a little bit like himself after going through the album Pop. Since the entire project seemed to be a glorified version of the group putting as much of their sound into a MIDI keyboard and hoping for the best, something that sounded vaguely like the group that sang ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ would have sufficed.
And it’s not like All That You Can’t Leave Behind isn’t a solid record, either. ‘Beautiful Day’ kicks things off in spectacular fashion, and while not every tune is on the same level as their iconic tracks, ‘Elevation’ became one of the best ways for people to come out of the shadow of 9/11.
But that didn’t mean that it came without a fight. Bono had been known for pushing his voice into different directions throughout the sessions, and outside of the emotional toll that tracks like ‘Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’ took on him, he tore through ‘Kite’ for the first time with his throat completely gone.
While the instrumentals can do a lot to make up for poor vocal performances, that was never going to fly in U2. Bono’s voice had always been a war cry amid all of the guitar wizardry The Edge was doing, but after a few passes and staying up to the wee hours of the morning, the frontman found his strength and then some when going through the track.
Later on, Bono would credit the track for helping bring his singing voice back from the brink, saying, “My voice returned at that moment. When I sang, ‘I’m a man, I’m not a child’, everyone in the studio almost fell over. I went: ‘Wow!’ It was like the blind man when the scales fall off his eyes. It was almost comedic. Where did that come from? I want some more of that!”
While ‘Kite’ isn’t anything special looking at the song’s construction, the vocal performance on the final record is nearly impossible to duplicate. Bono could still put together fantastic material out of just a few notes, but in the final version, you can hear the hours that were put into every single word he sang.
But maybe that’s the kind of discipline that U2 needed to get back into the public consciousness again. They had strayed too far away than anyone could have imagined at the time, but by returning to their roots as a rock and roll band, people got to hear the heart and soul of the group again.
