Irony. It’s what U2 thrived on in the ’90s. After serving as the most successfully over-emotional band in the ’80s, they took on a collectively kitschy persona and attempted the massive parody of American pop culture. But that’s not where the real irony got in. U2 eventually lost sight of the line, and got caught earnestly carrying out their commercial parody. They openly mocked the sell-out image, but forgot to keep above the parody. And that’s still not the irony. Petrified at the thought of becoming a product, U2 meticulously crafted a batch of unconnected and unrelated pop songs with a relentlessly upbeat idealism that shows absolutely no artistic growth…and it’s possibly one of their purest, simplest, and best albums.

All That You Can’t Leave Behind, ironically, yields an impersonal craft on its songs. But it doesn’t really matter; every song is a virtual swirl of ethereal beauty. The album itself is a massively overplanned flinch itself, or perfectionists perfecting pure instinct. And every song on here shows a talent that U2 treat like a reliance, instead of having to be all held up on being “conscious” about it. In John Lennon’s biggest post-Beatles break-up interview with Rolling Stone, he said that essentially the Beatles made their music by attempting to parody American culture. But can that be?; one of the most sincere bands of all time was ironic? What does it matter, it all turned out beautiful in the end. Maybe U2 just realized where their hearts were.

So every song on the album could easily be picked as a catchy single. The actual single “Beautiful Day” stands as U2’s finest song since “One,” while “Kite” is the best ballad of the album. “Wild Honey” seems like pure fun, and “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out” just seems…simple. The album retains Pop’s thick grungy sound, but has the grandeur of ol’ thanks to Brian Eno. The reliance factor is a big one—“I’m just trying to find a decent melody / A song that I can sing,” says Bono on “Stuck.”

I read an Entertainment Weekly article before All That… came out, and it classified it as an “artistic cross-roads record.” And I cannot fathom how U2 has come to this point. Pop was by no means the abominable Black Record in their oeuvre, and it certainly shouldn’t have taken them to the brink of their career. Hype is a large rolling boulder of a bitch, and whatever direction it goes in, it sometimes cannot be stopped. It seemed as if one not-up-to-par record had lost U2 all its stature, and in some people’s minds, their talent. And while on the brink, U2 stripped down, relied only on their strict talent for melody and struck the word “beauty” in their mind. And all this paranoia and fear led to this record.

Oh, that’s an irony.