As U2 were working on the song that would become Beautiful Day, the Edge’s bandmates pulled the guitarist up about the sound he was using. “The problem is it sounds like the Edge in U2,” Bono explained, with an irrefutable reply coming straight back at him. “I am the Edge in U2,” it went. “I can sound like this if I want.”
The exchange, recounted in the frontman’s 2022 memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, sums up some of the intra-band uncertainty in the group as they worked on tenth album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. It was hardly a moment of crisis – the Dublin quartet were still one of the world’s biggest bands and had embarked on stadium tour of the world, complete with OTT production and a 40-foot lemon, to support their previous album Pop. But there was a sense that things were sliding ever so slightly. Not all of the shows had sold out in North America and the experimental, dance-tinged grooves of Pop was severely lacking in a U2 speciality – songs that connected on a huge scale.
