Beautiful Day

The lyrics were inspired by Bono's experience with Jubilee 2000, a benefit urging politicians to drop the Third World Debt. Bono describes the song as about "a man who has lost everything, but finds joy in what he still has."

U2 wrote this in stages. It changed drastically when Bono came up with the "Beautiful Day" lyric and the idea for the backing vocals. They knew it was a hit when their label boss Jimmy Iovine told them so. As Iovine tells it, the group was disappointed with their 1997 album Pop, and told Jimmy they didn't want to release another album until he told them they had a hit single. Iovine, who produced their Rattle and Hum album, make frequent trips to Europe to check in on U2 while they were recording the album, and when they played him "Beautiful Day," he declared it the hit. It was released as the first track and first single on All That You Can't Leave Behind, which fared much better than Pop.

The Edge recalled the recording of this tune to Mojo Magazine July 2010: "(The song) had come through various different incarnations and though we'd always felt it had something it was kind of hard to see where it was going. Really, the moment it got exciting was when Bono hit on the lyric: 'It's a beautiful day.' It seems in some ways such a banal sort of lyric, but combined with the music something wild happened and we all recognized it. Then Brian (Eno) contribution was that fantastically Euro kick drum opening and keyboard line, and that gave us the clue as to where it should go next."