Beautiful Day - U2

Probably the Irish band U2's best album is their tenth, All that you can't leave behind. Released in 2000, its opening track is Beautiful Day, also released as a very successful single. The distinctive percussive guitar sound is a reversion to earlier hits. The song won various prestigious awards and is apparently a concert favourite. It went through various incarnations before emerging in its final form, the genesis being a chord sequence written by lead singer Bono and adapted by guitarist, The Edge. The band got bogged down with the song at one stage but producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois took things forward by introduing a drum machine, a piano part, synthesised strings and a new guitar part. Near the end of a 20-minute jam of the song, Bono sang, "It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away". After lunch, this impromptu vocal became the song's chorus. The Edge also added a high backing vocal and Lanois a lower wimoweh vocal. These were doubled and processed by Eno. The later mix, which included work by Steve Lillywhite, added a Bono guitar part. The bass line was also changed and some of the guitar work. The song ended up with four different time signatures. It opens with reverberating electric piano over a string synthesiser. The progression set up continues throughout the verses and chorus. After the opening line, "The heart is a bloom", the rhythm enters. In verse 1, Bono's vocals are in the front of the mix. About 30 seconds in a guitar arpeggio pattern first appears, echoing across the channels. The verses are relatively quiet until the chorus, when the Edge begins playing the song's guitar riff and the drums enter. During the chorus, Bono sings in a restrained manner, contrasting with the Edge's loud background vocals and the sustain on "day". After the second chorus, a bridge section begins, heightening the track's emotion as Bono sings "Touch me. Take me to that other place".The bridge links to the middle eight with a section in which the Edge repeats a modulated two note phrase on guitar. After seven seconds, the rhythm breaks and the middle eight begins. The lyrics for this section are in space, above Earth, as it were and views China, the Grand Canyon, tuna fleets and Bedouin fires, oil fields, etc. I especially like the biblical reference to "the bird with a leaf in her mouth after the flood", After a third chorus and a return of the bridge section, the song suddenly ends in a "low-key" fashion; most of the instrumentation stoping as a regeneration of a guitar signal drifts back and forth between channels before fading. According to Bono, it is about "a man who has lost everything, but finds joy in what he still has."