‘ecstatic and sexy’: Rock chameleons U2 change their sound again on All That You Can’t Leave Behind
By Sarah Granlund
Staff Editor

U2’s October 2000 studio album release was hailed by many critics as a comeback album. Um, to come back, wouldn’t they have had to leave?

U2 hasn’t left the music scene since appearing on it 1980, but All That You Can’t Leave Behind is definitely their best album of the past decade.

Bono, lead singer of U2, said in Rolling Stone number 860, “I feel like it’s always raining in our songs, that bittersweetness . . . What I like about pop music is its pure joy, and in the end it’s harder to make ecstatic, electrifying music. It’s the hardest thing in the world. We surrender too easily to the blues. We, if we’re not careful, are bleeding all over the world.”

With their newest album, U2 has both joyful and bittersweet music without being preachy or dismal. With songs like “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” Walk On,” and “In a Little While” talking about suicide, bad relationships, and yearning respectively, it’s hard to believe that the album isn’t a bit more depressing.

The prevailing theme of the album is the idea of mortality; how death waits for everyone, but there are many things worth treasuring in this world and this life.

“Stuck in a Moment...” is indirectly about the 1997 suicide of Bono’s close friend and INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence. It’s about being in a dark place where suicide is the only way out, but the prevailing message is “It’s just a moment/ This time will pass.” Like this one, the rest of the album’s songs have a positive message without being too in-your-face about it.

“Peace on Earth” is directed at Jesus himself, asking for, you guessed it, peace on earth. It’s not overtly religious with the speaker saying he is “sick of sorrow/ sick of pain” and asking Jesus if he “could take the time/ To throw a drowning man a line.” A good song with a valid point, a lovely melody, and beautiful vocals.

Not all the songs are quite so serious though. Songs like “Wild Honey,” “Elevation,” and “Beautiful Day,” are fun and upbeat.

“Beautiful Day,” probably the only single to be released in the U.S. and one that earned the band three Grammys, has a dance beat and some interesting guitar and synthesizer effects. Interesting in a good way that adds the eclectic nature of the album.

Elevation is kind of a stream of consciousness song, moving from a woman’s lips and hips to “a mole, living in a hole / digging up my soul” and “a star lit up like a cigar / strung out like a guitar.” I don’t know what this song means, but a lot of stuff could probably be read into it. It’s fun to listen to though, and that’s always important.

“Our music in the early eighties, it might have been ecstatic, but it wasn’t really sexy, was it?” Bono said. “Now we’re sexy and ecstatic.”

U2 is still sexy even as they enter their forties. Their music is too. One only has to listen to their new album to understand that.