When they finally retire, U2 will be remembered for a lot of things. For a band that has placed such a big emphasis on visuals, I think U2 will be more remembered for their live shows and their personas than their music videos. They've had some great ones, some good ones, and some ones we will not mention here.
But if we're talking music videos that will live on with the U2 legacy, we're only talking about maybe four out of a career that spans four decades. So today we're looking at one of them, "Beautiful Day" from 2000.
Filmed at Charles de Gaulle International Airport international airport in Paris, the video is almost like a live action version of the album cover for All That You Can't Leave Behind, which "Beautiful Day" was the lead single off of. The terminal that we see in the album cover and the video features white, understated architecture, which is important to remember since just three years earlier U2 had been on tour with a live show that included them appearing out of a giant shiny lemon, and were in music videos featuring themselves playing inside a disco ball.
Directed by Jonas Åkerlund, the video features Bono goofing around in an airport doing things like trying to steal people's luggage and eating an apple on the luggage conveyer. This is pre 9/11, obviously - U2 probably wouldn't have gone with an airport theme if this song was released afterwards. The video ends with the band playing on a runway with some nice rugs strewn about.
It's not so much that this is a captivating video, but did manage to set the tone for U2 for the 00s, which were a decade for U2 that saw three albums and several incredibly successful tours. They had decided to shed the image they had cultivated in the 90s and needed a single and a video to bring them into the new millennium, and this video set the tone. It also instilled the fear in many people in airports that Bono might walk up any second and try and steal your luggage.
