"Beautiful Day" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the first track on their tenth studio album, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), and was released as the album's lead single on 9 October 2000. Like many tracks from All That You Can't Leave Behind, "Beautiful Day" harkens back to the group's past sound. The tone of the Edge's guitar was a subject of debate among the band members, as they disagreed on whether he should use a sound similar to that from their early career in the 1980s. The band's lead vocalist Bono explained that the upbeat track is about losing everything but still finding joy in what one has.
"Beautiful Day" received positive reviews from music critics, and it was a commercial success, helping launch the album to multi-platinum status. The song became the band's 14th number-one single on the Irish Singles Chart. Outside Ireland, "Beautiful Day" topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, and peaked within the top ten of the charts in Austria, Belgium, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and Switzerland. "Beautiful Day" also peaked at number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, the band's highest position since "Discothèque" in 1997.
In 2001, the song won three Grammy Awards for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony. The group has played "Beautiful Day" at every one of their concerts since the song's live debut on the Elevation Tour in 2001.
Writing and recording "Beautiful Day" originated from recording sessions held by U2 in a small room at Hanover Quay Studio in Dublin in the winter of 1999.McCormick (2006), pp. 296, 299–300 In its earliest permutation, "Beautiful Day" was a different song called "Always", which was later released as a B-side. The song's genesis came from a chord sequence that lead vocalist Bono composed and that guitarist the Edge subsequently adapted. The group worked on the song for several days in the studio, but were unable to make much progress with it.Lanois (2010), pp. 111–113 The Edge said, "As a straight rock song, it was pretty ho-hum." Co-producer Daniel Lanois said: "the sound of it was a bit stuck in the barroom, and as usual our expectations were high. We wanted to feel the future and not just the past."
Co-producer Brian Eno was frustrated with the lack of progress on the song, and early one morning, he and Lanois arrived in the studio before U2 to prepare some musical ideas. Eno created a rhythm on a drum machine, over which he added a piano part and synthesised strings. Lanois played a guitar part on a Fender Telecaster that was a third above the root of the Edge's guitar sequence, providing what he described as a "choral quality, like harmony singing". The producers' ideas proved to be musically inspiring to the band when they arrived and resumed work on the song. Lanois described the Edge's resulting guitar playing as "sounding like shattered, splintered metal coming at you like a meteor storm". 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 taking a lunch break, the producers thought that Bono's impromptu vocal from the outro could be made into the song's chorus. They quickly edited the vocal part into earlier sections of the jam, turning it into what would be the chorus of "Beautiful Day".
Before leaving the studio one day, the Edge listened to the chorus vocals, and thinking they sounded bare, he picked up a microphone and improvised a backing vocal, singing a high fifth. At the same time, Lanois harmonised a lower doo-wop style vocal that he described as similar to those in "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Their voices were then doubled and processed by Eno. The Edge called the backing vocals a "beautiful counterpoint" to Bono's singing and "the final key element that the song needed".
During the recording process for the All That You Can't Leave Behind album, the band decided to distance themselves from their 1990s experimentation with electronic dance music in favour of a "return to the traditional U2 sound". At the same time, the band was looking for a more forward looking sound. This led to debate amongst the band when the Edge was playing the song on his Gibson Explorer guitar with a tone used in much of their early material up to their 1983 album War. Bono was particularly resistant to the guitar tone the Edge was playing with, but the Edge ultimately won the disagreement. As he explained, "It was because we were coming up with some innovative music that I felt a license to use some signature guitar sounds."
The mixing process proved difficult, lasting two weeks. Long-time U2 producer Steve Lillywhite was hired to help complete the final mix. Several changes were made during this period; Bono added a guitar part that played the song's chord progression to double the bass, an addition that "solidified everything", according to the Edge. The Edge also changed the bass line in the chorus and converted a keyboard idea of Bono's into a guitar part that added a "sour quality" to balance the track's positivity. Lanois described the completed song as "one of those little gifts where you think, my god, we've got it!"
Composition "Beautiful Day" is played at a tempo of 136 beats per minute in a time signature. The song opens with a reverberating electric piano playing over a string synthesiser, introducing the chord progression of A–Bm7–D–G–D9–A.Rooksby (2001), pp. 161–162 This progression continues throughout the verses and chorus, the changes not always one to a bar. After the opening line, "The heart is a bloom", the rhythm enters, comprising repeated eighth notes on bass guitar and a drum machine. In the first verse, Bono's vocals are in the front of the mix and their production is dry. At 0:29, a guitar arpeggio pattern by the Edge first appears, echoing across channels. The verses are relatively quiet until the chorus, when the Edge begins playing the song's guitar riff and Larry Mullen's drums enter. During the chorus, Bono sings in a restrained manner, contrasting with the Edge's "loud, bellowing" background vocals, a sustained cry of "day".
After the second chorus, a bridge section begins at 1:55, playing the chord progression Fm–G–D–A, 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, beginning at 2:08. After seven seconds, the rhythm breaks and the middle eight begins. The chords in this section follow a progression of Em–D–Em–G–D–Em–G–D–A, implying a key of D major. The bass plays a G note beneath the Em chord, implying a chord change does not occur. The lyrics for this section are set in space above Earth and describe the sights that one witnesses, including China, the Grand Canyon, tuna fleets, and Bedouin fires. After the third chorus and a return of the bridge section, the song suddenly ends in a "low-key" fashion; most of the instrumentation stops and a regeneration of a guitar signal drifts back and forth between channels before fading out.
According to Bono, "Beautiful Day" is about "a man who has lost everything, but finds joy in what he still has." Blender interpreted the song and the line "it's a beautiful day" as "a vision of abandoning material things and finding grace in the world itself". In his 2001 book Inside Classic Rock Tracks, Rikki Rooksby described the lyrics as having a "fuzzy" quality and covering an "ambiguous subject area between religion and romance". He found "grace and salvation" in the verses' lyrics and believed that despite not explicitly explaining how to emotionally persevere, the song has "so many suggestive images that it's enough".
Simon Reynolds of Uncut characterises the song as "Boys wide-eyed ardour filtered through Unforgettable Fires tingly shimmerscape production", with Edge's echoing "Echoplex chimes", but that despite the deceptively simple composition, "the production teems with subtle flickers, dub-wise backwash whooshes, and vocal harmony embellishments. Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger compares the ripple of keyboard in the middle-eight section to William Orbit.
In a 2005 episode of the Sundance Channel's Iconoclasts, R.E.M.'s lead singer Michael Stipe said, "I love that song. I wish I'd written it, and they know I wish I'd written it. It makes me dance; it makes me angry that I didn't write it."
In a 2000 interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, following speculation in Q, the Edge stated that the song was in part unconsciously inspired by the 1985 a-ha song "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.". Morten Harket, lead singer of a-ha, said in an interview with NME that the similarity was "fine" and "natural".
Release "Beautiful Day" was the first single released from the album All That You Can't Leave Behind. It was serviced to US rock radio on 19 September 2000 and was issued in the UK on 9 October 2000 as a CD and cassette single. The following day, on 10 October, the single was issued in Canada. The song reached number one on the singles charts in Australia, Canada, on the United Kingdom Singles Chart and the Irish Singles Chart, and also boosted sales of All That You Can't Leave Behind. "Beautiful Day" is included on the compilations The Best of 1990–2000 (2002) and U218 Singles (2006) and was reworked and re-recorded for Songs of Surrender (2023). A version of the song known as the Quincy and Sonance Mix appears on U2's 2002 EP 7.
Music video The song's video was directed by Jonas Åkerlund and filmed in August 2000. It depicts the band walking around in Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport (where the photographs for All That You Can't Leave Behind were taken), with scenes of the band playing in a hangar, at the terminal, and on a runway interspliced with large jets taking off and landing overhead.
An alternative video for the song, shot in Èze, France, was featured on U2 Exclusive CD!, the bonus DVD from The Best of 1990–2000, and the U218 Videos DVD. A month before the album release, a live version of the song was filmed in Dublin on the rooftop of The Clarence Hotel. It is featured on the extra features of the Elevation 2001: Live from Boston DVD (although it is marked on the DVD as "Toronto, Canada").
Live performances
Ever since its tour debut at the first date of the Elevation Tour on 24 March 2001 in Miami, "Beautiful Day" has been played at every single full tour concert as well as a number of promotional appearances and concerts not connected with a tour. On the Elevation Tour, "Beautiful Day" was normally the second song played, though it did open one show, and was played late in the set list at two concerts. During the 2005-2006 Vertigo Tour, it appeared in the first half of the main set.
On the 2009-2011 U2 360° Tour it typically appeared early in the main set, it also opened some concerts in the early 2011 shows. For the final leg of the tour it was moved back to the midpoint of the show and featured a pre-recorded video of astronaut Mark Kelly. Kelly had previously chosen the song for a wake up call on the 2011 Space Shuttle flight STS-134. On the 2015 Innocence + Experience Tour it either appeared late in the main set or during the encore.
During The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 "Beautiful Day" would often open the encore. Performances on this tour featured an extended introduction leading into the start of the song, and the bridge was extended with synth like voices in the background. Performances on the 2019 leg of the tour were similar. For the 2018 Experience + Innocence Tour, the song was moved towards the beginning of the show, initially the same extended introduction was used as on The Joshua Tree Tours 2017 and 2019, however this was dropped after a few shows.