U2 - Beautiful Day

NOV 2000

U2 - Beautiful Day (2000) Director: Jonas Åkerlund Era: Post-Grunge Alt-Rock Mainstream Revival (2000) - U2's deliberate return to anthemic rock after the experimental 1990s PopMart era, coinciding with the launch of All That You Can't Leave Behind and a global cultural moment of millennial optimism. A landmark artifact of the early-2000s music video canon, preserving both a defining moment in U2's career trajectory and a high-water mark for Jonas Åkerlund's realist performance aesthetic. The video's combination of industrial-scale location production, rapid kinetic editing, and understated band presence makes it a primary document of how mainstream rock video evolved away from 1990s excess toward grounded authenticity. Its Grammy- and MTV-decorated source track ensures enduring research and archival significance. Context: Released in autumn 2000, 'Beautiful Day' marked U2's commercial and critical resurgence after the divisive experimental Pop era (1997). The video's airport setting, Charles de Gaulle, the same location used for the All That You Can't Leave Behind album photography, functions as a deliberate symbol of transit, global connectivity, and post-ironic humanism. Filmed amid peak millennial optimism, the imagery of jets and open skies carried an aspirational charge that would acquire retrospective weight after September 2001. The song went on to win three Grammy Awards including Record and Song of the Year, cementing its status as a defining artifact of early-2000s rock. Director notes: The 'Beautiful Day' video was filmed in August 2000 at Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport (primarily Terminal 2F and the active runway), produced by Bandits Productions. It premiered on MTV and VH1 on September 8, 2000, ahead of the single's commercial release on October 9, 2000. The video features the band walking through the airport terminal and performing on carpets laid directly on the runway while operational jets take off and land overhead. According to u2songs.com, Åkerlund first visited U2 at their Dublin recording studios in late Spring 2000 while the album was still unfinished. He has stated his goal was to capture U2 as a performing band in a way not previously seen in their video catalogue. The video was included on The Best of 1990–2000 DVD with optional director's commentary, and on the U218 Videos compilation. A one-minute teaser aired at the MTV VMAs prior to the full premiere.