No Line on the Horizon
No Line on the Horizon is the twelfth studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was produced by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Steve Lillywhite, and was released on 27 February 2009. It was the band's first record since How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), marking the longest gap between studio albums of their career to that point. The band originally intended to release the songs as two EPs, but later combined the material into a single record. Photographer Anton Corbijn shot a companion film, Linear, which was released alongside the album and included with several special editions.
This article is about the album. For the title track of this album, see No Line on the Horizon (song).No Line on the Horizon
27 February 2009
May 2007 – December 2008
53:44
U2 began work on a new album in 2006 with record producer Rick Rubin but shelved most of the material from those sessions. In May 2007, the group began new sessions with Eno and Lanois in Fez, Morocco, while attending the World Sacred Music Festival. Intending to write "future hymns"—songs that would be played forever—the group spent two weeks recording in a riad, with the producers involved in the songwriting process. The exotic musical influences that the group were exposed to in Fez inspired them to pursue a more experimental sound, but as the sessions unfolded, the band decided to scale back the extent of those pursuits. Having grown tired of writing in the first-person, lead singer Bono wrote his lyrics from the perspective of different characters. Recording continued at several studios in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland through December 2008. The group had intended to release No Line on the Horizon in November, but after composing 50 to 60 songs, they delayed the release to continue writing.
Prior to the album's release, U2 claimed that their time in Fez, as well as Eno's and Lanois' involvement, had resulted in a more experimental record than their previous two albums. The band compared the shift in style to that seen between their albums The Joshua Tree (1987) and Achtung Baby (1991). Upon release, No Line on the Horizon received generally favourable reviews, although many critics noted that it was not as experimental as previously suggested. The album debuted at number one in 30 countries but did not sell as well as anticipated; the band expressed disappointment over the relatively low sales of five million copies, compared to previous albums. Following the release of No Line on the Horizon, the band discussed plans to release a meditative follow-up album, Songs of Ascent, but the project has not come to fruition. The supporting U2 360° Tour from 2009 to 2011 broke the record for the highest-grossing concert tour in history, earning over $736 million.
Recording and production[edit]
Aborted sessions with Rick Rubin[edit]
In 2006, U2 started work on the follow-up to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), collaborating with producer Rick Rubin.[1] After U2 guitarist the Edge worked individually with Rubin in Los Angeles,[2] the group spent two weeks in September 2006 completing songs with the producer at Abbey Road Studios in London.[3] Later that year, the band released two songs from these sessions on the compilation album U218 Singles: a cover of the Skids' "The Saints Are Coming" with Green Day, and "Window in the Skies".[2][4] In January 2007, lead singer Bono said U2 intended to take their next album in a different musical direction from their previous few releases. He said: "We're gonna continue to be a band, but maybe the rock will have to go; maybe the rock has to get a lot harder. But whatever it is, it's not gonna stay where it is."[5]
Rubin encouraged a "back to basics" approach and wanted the group to bring finished songs to the studio. This approach conflicted with U2's freeform recording style, by which they improvised material in the studio.[4] The Edge said: "we sort of hadn't really finished the songs. It's typical for us, because it's in the process of recording that we really do our writing."[6] Bassist Adam Clayton said: "once we have a song, we're interested in the atmospherics and the tones and the overdubs and the different stuff you can do with it... things that Rick was not in the slightest bit interested in. He was interested in getting it from embryonic stage to a song that could be mixed and put on a record."[6] They ultimately decided to shelve the material recorded with Rubin,[4] but expressed interest in revisiting it in the future.[6] Rubin said: "I don't know what their perspective was. I thought we had fun."[7]
Commercial performance[edit]
No Line on the Horizon opened with strong sales, debuting at number one in thirty countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[103] Within one week of release, the album was certified platinum in Brazil, a record for the country.[104] In the United States, it was U2's seventh number-one album; first-week sales exceeded 484,000, the band's second-highest figures after How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.[103] In the United Kingdom, the album sold 157,928 copies in its first week to become U2's tenth number-one album, making them the fifth-most-successful act on the UK Albums Chart.[105][106] By June 2009, over five million copies had been sold worldwide.[107] Globally it was the seventh-highest-selling album of 2009.[108]
Sales of the album stalled midway through 2009. By October, just over one million copies had been sold in the US, the group's lowest in more than a decade.[109] Through March 2014, the album's lifetime sales in the country totaled 1.1 million copies.[110] In the UK, the record sold less than a third of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb's figures, and a quarter of All That You Can't Leave Behind's.[111] Global sales of No Line on the Horizon remained at five million copies through September 2010.[112] The album did not generate a hit single;[111] ABC noted that sales of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb had been propelled by the track "Vertigo, which had become well known to the public from its use in iPod commercials.[113]
Legacy[edit]
Eight months after No Line on the Horizon's release, Bono said he was disappointed with the album's sales.[111] Regarding the lack of commercial appeal, Bono said, "We weren't really in that mindset. We felt that the 'album' is almost an extinct species, and we [tried to] create a mood and feeling, and a beginning, middle and an end. And I suppose we've made a work that is a bit challenging for people who have grown up on a diet of pop stars."[111] Clayton agreed that the album's commercial reception must be "challenged" but said, "the more interesting challenge is, 'What is rock 'n' roll in this changing world?' Because, to some extent, the concept of the music fan—the concept of the person who buys music and listens to music for the pleasure of music itself—is an outdated idea."[109] The Edge predicted that, despite its lack of a big hit, No Line on the Horizon would grow on listeners over time.[111] He noted that the reaction to the songs in the live setting made U2 believe that the material was connecting with the fans, adding, "There's a lot of records that make great first impressions. There might be one song that gets to be big on the radio, but they're not albums that people ... play a lot. This is one that I gather from talking to people. ... Four months later, they're saying, 'I'm really getting into the album now.'"[130] McGuinness believed that the conditions of the music market were more responsible for the low sales than any decline in U2's popularity.[131]
Lillywhite believed that the African influences had not translated well onto the album, remarking: "It's a pity because the whole idea of Morocco as a big idea was great. When the big idea for U2 is good, that is when they succeed the most, but I don't think the spirit of what they set out to achieve was translated. Something happened that meant it did not come across on the record."[132] The Edge concurred, admitting that the group erred by "starting out experimental and then trying to bring it into something that was more accessible". He added, "I think probably we should have said, 'It's an experimental work. That's what it is.'"[133] Mullen refers to the album as "No Craic on the Horizon" and said, "It was pretty fucking miserable. It turns out that we're not as good as we thought we were and things got in the way."[134] He attributed the release of "Get On Your Boots" as the album's lead single as "the beginning of the end," as the album did not recover from the song's negative reception.[135] The band played fewer songs from No Line on the Horizon as the 360° Tour went on, which Mullen called "a little bit of a defeat."[135]
• (add.) Additional production
Notes
Adapted from the liner notes.[34]
U2
Additional performers
Technical