Songoftheday 7/8/22 - The heart is a bloom shoots up through the stony ground, there's no room No space to rent in this town...

 

 

"Beautiful Day" - U2

from the album All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #21 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 15

 

Today's song comes from the Irish rock group U2, who we last saw with their eclectic ninth album Pop in 1997 which spun off a pair of hits with "Discotheque" and "Staring At The Sun", but wasn't the blockbuster the band (and their fans) were used to.  Between the rushed nature of the album and the chaos that was the tour behind it (even though it grabbed a Grammy nomination for the Popmart: Live In Mexico DVD for Best Long Form Music Video losing to the late Jimi Hendrix's Band Of Gypsies: Live At Fillmore East), the closing of the century left the foursome discombobulated. The following year, the band put out their first retrospective, The Best Of 1980-1990/The B-Sides, which spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally. One of those B-sides, a redone "The Sweetest Thing" from 1987, became a decent international hit, topping the singles charts in Canada, Ireland, and Iceland, and making the top ten in such places as the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain, but stalled out on the American pop Hot 100 at #63. The song did hit the top ten on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock radio chart at #9 and peaked at #24 on the Mainstream Rock format list, and rose to #12 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart.

Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr, and Adam Clayton returned in 2000 in a low-key fashion, contributing songs to the movie The Million Dollar Hotel which Bono co-wrote and co-produced that starred Mel Gibson and Milla Jovovich. One of them, the electronic moody piece "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", had lyrics from novel writer Salman Rushdie, and climbed to #20 on Billboard's Alternative Rock radio chart. 

But that wasn't the direction U2 was going, as the waning reception to Pop and the retrospective had caused them to reverse course and go back to the anthemic rock they had broke through with. In the fall, the group released All That You Can't Leave Behind. The lead single was "Beautiful Day", written by the band and produced by Daniel Lanois, Steve Lillywhite, and Brian Eno. The lyrics harken back to their earlier work, with vague spiritual themes and emphasizing soul over materialism, but the production tweaks it all with studio tricks from Eno that filter and mutate the instruments without sounding artificial. Personally, I'm not a fan of the lyrics, but they needed to get their mojo back on track, and this arena-style fist-pumper did the trick for them with radio and the fans...

"Beautiful Day" brought U2 back to the pop charts, though it stalled right under the top-20 in January of 2001. The song climbed to #5 on Billboard's Alternative Rock radio chart, while topping out at #14 on the Mainstream Rock list, but at the new Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple A") rock format, it spent 16 weeks at #1. It also rose to #14 on the Mainstream Top 40 radio survey and #4 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 list. The remixes of the track, done by DJ's C.J. Agnelli and Robbie Nelson under the pseudonym of Quincey and Sonance, spent a week at #1 on the Dance Club Play chart as well. Internationally, the single was massive, going to #1 in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Australia, the Netherlands, Ireland, Finland, Norway, and Portugal, while reaching the top ten in Denmark (#2), Croatia (#2), Hungary (#2), Iceland (#2), Greece (#3), Switzerland (#6), Belgium (#6W/#8F), Germany (#7), Sweden (#7), and Austria (#7). The All  You Can't Leave Behind album, released in October of 2000, was their first to not go to #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally since their 1984 set The Unforgettable Fire, spending a week at #3, but lasted for 94 weeks on the list selling over four million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, "Beautiful Day" won for both Song of the Year and Record Of The Year as well as Best Duo/Group Rock Performance with Vocal. A year later, the All You Can't Leave Behind disc won for Best Rock Album, and was nominated for Album Of The Year, which went to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. 

The second single from All That You Can't Leave Behind in America was "Walk On", which was dedicated to Burmese politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. The track got to #2 at Triple-A rock stations, #10 on the Alternative Rock chart, #19 on Mainstream Rock radio, and #21 on the Adult Top-40 format, but only "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #118. Nevertheless, it won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 2002, and was nominated for Best Rock Song (losing to Train's "Drops Of Jupiter"). A year later, the live performance of the song on the 9/11 charity gig America: A Tribute To The Heroes broadcast had it nominated for Best Rock Duo/Group Performance, which Coldplay took home for "In My Place". 

That was followed by "Elevation", which again got to the top ten on Alternative Rock radio at #8 while cresting at #21 on the mainstream side, but also "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #116. Dance remixes helped it place on the Dance Club Play chart down at #32. But the Grammy's rewarded U2 with the Best Duo/Group Rock Performance in 2002, losing the Best Rock Song (having two nominees) to Train.

 

Lastly came "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of", which was inspired by the suicide of Michael Hutchence of the band INXS. Although it got to #9 on the Adult Top-40 radio chart, and topped the Triple-A Rock list for a week, and even made it to #27 on the mainstream top-40 list, on the Hot 100 it stopped at #52 (the algorithm for the trade magazine at the time was skewed to say the least). At rock radio, it went to #35 on both the Alternative and Mainstream Rock charts. At the 2002 Grammy, this one won for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, while being up for Song Of The Year, which went to Alicia Keys' breakthrough single "Fallin'". 

U2 will return to the series.

(6/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

The band got up on the roof for their MTV performance in 2000...

Here's U2 a year later in concert in Slane Castle Ireland...

The group did "Beautiful Day" at the Live 8 concerts in 2005...

In 2009, U2 performed for five nights on Letterman including this "Beautiful Day" take...

And lastly, here's an orchestral version from the BBC in 2017 ...

I'll be on vacation for a week after my weekly chart, so sit tight and I'll be back soon enough. Thanks for reading.