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.
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's 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
Aborted sessions with Rick Rubin In 2006, U2 started work on the follow-up to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), collaborating with producer Rick Rubin. After U2 guitarist the Edge worked individually with Rubin in Los Angeles, the group spent two weeks in September 2006 completing songs with the producer at Abbey Road Studios in London.McGee (2008), pp. 314–315 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". 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."
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. 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." 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." They ultimately decided to shelve the material recorded with Rubin, but expressed interest in revisiting it in the future. Rubin said: "I don't know what their perspective was. I thought we had fun."
Sessions with Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Steve Lillywhite
U2 subsequently began working with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois in May 2007.McGee (2008), pp. 327–328 Bono, who had accepted an invitation to the World Sacred Music Festival in Fez, Morocco, invited his bandmates to attend. Bono also invited Eno and Lanois, hoping they would collaborate with the band as full songwriting partners in recording an album of "futuristic spirituals" or "future hymns"—songs that would be played forever. For two weeks, U2, Eno, and Lanois rented the riad of the hotel Riad El Yacout in Fez and turned it into a makeshift recording studio, occasionally recording with an oud player and local percussionists.
Recording during the festival exposed the group to Hindu and Jewish music, Sufi singing and Joujouka drums. The exotic influences inspired them to pursue a more experimental sound. Clayton said the music they heard in Fez "had a primitivism ... but there was an other-worldly feel, there was that connection with that Arabic scale." Eno insisted that drummer Larry Mullen Jr. use an electronic drum kit. The band described many of the tracks conceived in these sessions as unsuitable for radio airplay or for playing live. The open-air riad allowed the group to hear birdsong, as captured in the introduction to "Unknown Caller". The songs "Moment of Surrender", "White as Snow", "No Line on the Horizon" and "Unknown Caller" were written at this time; each track was recorded in one take. In total, the band recorded approximately 10 songs during the two weeks. The Edge said of their time with Eno and Lanois in Fez, "it became very clear almost immediately that this was gonna be a very fruitful experiment." He called it "a very freeing experience" that "reminded [him] in many ways of early on and why [they] got into a band in the first place. Just that joy of playing." When the topic of who would produce the record was broached, Lanois suggested, "[the album is] kind of producing itself, so let's just go with the people we have", cementing him and Eno in the roles.
After leaving Fez, the band recorded in Hanover Quay Studios in Dublin, Platinum Sound Recording Studios in New York City, and Olympic Studios in London. Steve Lillywhite was brought in to produce a few tracks during these subsequent sessions. In pre-release interviews, U2 compared the extent of their expected shift in musical style to that of Achtung Baby. The band scaled back these experimental pursuits, however; Mullen noted: "at a certain stage, reality hits, and you go, 'What are we gonna do with this stuff?' Are we going to release this sort of meandering experimentation, or are we gonna knock some songs out of this?" Bono shared this opinion, stating, "We went so far out on the Sufi singing and the sort of ecstatic-music front, that we had to ground it and find a counterpoint." Eno commented that many of "the more contemplative and sonically adventurous songs" had been dropped, attributing the lack of African-inspired music to its sounding "synthetic" and unconvincing when paired with other songs.
Clayton filmed the band's progress during the album's production; these videos were added to the subscribers' section of U2.com. On 16 August 2008, an eavesdropping fan recorded several songs playing from Bono's beach house in Èze, France. These "beach clips" were uploaded to YouTube, but removed at Universal Music's request. In November 2008, the Edge confirmed the album's working title as No Line on the Horizon and noted that the band had to move quickly to complete mixing to meet the new February release date. In an interview with Q, the group revealed that rapper will.i.am had worked with them on the track "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight".
In December 2008, U2 recorded at Olympic Studios in London, putting the finishing touches to the album and making several changes to its content. The group had planned to release the material as two extended plays, titled Daylight and Darkness, but during these sessions decided to compile the best songs onto one album. The band struggled to complete "Stand Up Comedy", a song they had been working on since the Fez sessions 16 months previously. The song had been through multiple iterations and titles, including "For Your Love" and "Stand Up". U2 dropped "Winter", a song Eno had urged them to complete, as well as "Every Breaking Wave", which they removed to reduce the album's running time. "Winter" appears in the accompanying Anton Corbijn film Linear and the 2009 war film Brothers. Both songs had been mentioned in pre-release album reviews.
The band changed many of the tracks' names during recording, retitling "French Disco" to "Magnificent" and "Crazy Tonight" to "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight". "Chromium Chords" became "Tripoli", and finally "Fez – Being Born". Note: subscription required. The band considered "Fez – Being Born" and "Get On Your Boots" as album openers, but ultimately decided on "No Line on the Horizon". At the end of the sessions, the band chose to include "White as Snow", a quiet song about a dying soldier in Afghanistan, to balance out the earlier, rockier tunes. With the exception of this track, U2 had tried to keep the theme of war out of the album. In early December 2008, Clayton stated, "this is definitely the last week of recording. But then again, last week was definitely the last week of recording, and the week before that." The final sessions ended later that month. No Line on the Horizon is dedicated to Rob Partridge, who signed the band's first record deal in 1980 and died of cancer in late 2008.
Follow-up album In February 2009, Bono stated that by the end of the year, U2 would release an album consisting of unused material from the No Line on the Horizon sessions. Bono labelled it "a more meditative album on the theme of pilgrimage". Provisionally titled Songs of Ascent, it would be a sister release to No Line on the Horizon, similar to Zooropas relationship to Achtung Baby. In June 2009, Bono said that although nine tracks had been completed, the album would only be released if its quality surpassed that of No Line on the Horizon. A December 2009 report stated that U2 had been working in the studio with the goal of a mid-2010 release. The band revealed that the first single was intended to be "Every Breaking Wave".
Over time, the album continued to be delayed. In April 2010, U2's manager Paul McGuinness confirmed that the album would not be finished by June, but indicated that a release "before the end of the year [was] increasingly likely." In October 2010, Bono stated that their new album would be produced by Danger Mouse, and that 12 songs had been completed. He also noted that U2 were working on a potential album of club music in the spirit of "U2's remixes in the 1990s". Around the same time, McGuinness said the album was slated for an early 2011 release. In February 2011, he said that the album was almost complete and had a tentative release date of May 2011, although he noted that Songs of Ascent was no longer the likely title. The Songs of Ascent project ultimately did not come to fruition and has not been released; its evolution and apparent abandonment are examined in the book The Greatest Albums You'll Never Hear. Clayton said, "We thought there was more material left over from No Line... we now feel a long way from that material."