U2: All That You Can’t Leave Behind

I’ve been a U2 fan since I was a teenager and bought my first album in 1985, Unforgettable Fire. I’ve bought many of their subsequent albums over the years. So how to explain why it’s this album from 2000 that I’m including?

I know the obvious album for most of us is The Joshua Tree and I really love that album. The Unforgettable Fire is probably my second choice, being my first U2 album. Both have some amazing songs on them and I have listened to them both repeatedly over the years. In fact, I revisited both while making decisions on which album to list here. In the end, I decided it was as much about my attachments to the music as to the influence. Anyway, you can still be shaped by the same artist at any time and on any work. All That You Can’t Leave Behind was where my mind went almost every time I considered it and so here I am.

I will say again I’ve been a fan since my teenage years, most specifically high school (again!). The album War was out and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “New Years Day” particularly were part of the background of my senior year of high school. The Unforgettable Fire became that bridging album from them bursting into the mainstream arena to becoming superstars as they did with The Joshua Tree. They were one of the biggest bands in the world and Bono’s head was swollen to a great size by then. :D The next couple of albums came and went and then there was Pop. I applaud them for shaking things up but that album didn’t work for me even though there are one or two songs I like on it. They’d already made a lot of albums so I thought maybe this was the beginning of the end.

But along comes the year 2000 and U2 were back with a new album and a return to rock. It wasn’t quite the same as earlier U2 but instead was a modern take on the band of old. Near the end of the year, they released the first single off the album, “Beautiful Day” and for me it was a like a renewal of my love of the band. The song is about finding joy in the life, even when everything seems to be against you. It’s one of those positive songs that just makes you feel good when you hear it and here in Australia was hugely popular.

Fast forward to the middle of 2001 and our family found ourselves flying across the world to live in Canada for six months. We arrived in early July to a very foggy Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (across the harbour from Halifax) and we couldn’t see much of anything until the following day when the clouds cleared away. There were a few snafus along the way but we were soon settled in for the long haul, which turned out to be nearly a year instead of the six months. It was here that I finally got a copy of the album for myself.

The next song of interest is “Elevation”. I can’t go into the specifics in public but this song is a sentimental favorite and the association I have with it will always come back to me when I hear it. The song itself comes off big and loud and strong but somehow it comes together to make an enjoyable song. It’s a song made for being played in arenas, at least as far as I’ve seen on dvds of concerts. Alas, I’ve yet to see this band play live so totally testing it out perhaps isn’t in the cards for me.

Dartmouth was where we were when the events of September 11, 2001 unfolded and it was a strange time indeed. Game Fanatic was in school that day and I was home snuggling with Lego Lover in bed when children’s programs on CBC were interrupted with the news of the New York attack. I remember planes disappearing from the skies almost immediately and how quiet it was. Stranded airline passengers were put up in the high school across the road from the elementary school. We had the news on all the time for days and weeks on end. It was a chaotic and horrific time.

This brings me to the song “Peace on Earth”, whose lyrics were inspired by the 1998 bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland. It’s a sad song and it’s an angry and fed up song and it took on more significance after the attacks that occurred in 2001. One of the best songs on the album, in my opinion.

“In a Little While” is a sweet little love song to Bono’s wife. His voice isn’t the best in it but it kind of works anyway.

“New York” is essentially an ode to the city and was another song from the album that took on more meaning after the events of September 11, 2001. Even though I’ve not been there, it does seem to capture some of the essence of the city as have understood it from afar.

I had a bit of a surprise when I listened again before writing this. Apparently here in Australia there was a bonus track called “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” that appears at the end of the album and I never heard it before now. It’s an interesting song and the lyrics were adapted from something in a Salman Rushdie book. But it feels a bit alien to hear when I’ve only listened to the version I had from Canada. I always thought the last song was “Grace”, another song that is really beautiful and moving. As an ending that song works well. I’m not too sure how I feel about this other song’s intrusion on my connections since it messes around with the order of things in my mind and it doesn’t quite fit for me.

This album is so intrinsically intertwined with this period of my life that I imagine that none of the other U2 albums will ever quite compete. That’s saying a lot considering The Joshua Tree came out the year I finished college and embarked on my journey into the real world for the first time. And in times like we are in now, I think songs like “Beautiful Day” are really needed to help us find our way through.