People always ask us if we think our songs can really change anything. And I always say that's not why we wrote the songs. We didn't write them so they would change the situation. During my time as a performer, I've certainly felt that I was seeing the end of the guitar. Songwriting for U2 is always a very ambiguous process. We write as we record, but in the case of Pop we took that to the nth degree. The loops and machines offered an endless amount of options and in U2 options are not your friends. Limitations, in fact, are often really the thing, and we've made full use of our limitations over the years. "Beautiful Day" itself had come through various different incarnations and though we'd always felt it had something, it was kind of hard to see where it was going. Really, the moment it got exciting was when Bono hit on the lyric: "It's a beautiful day". It seems in some ways such a banal sort of lyric, but combined with the music something wild happened and we all recognised it. Then Brian's (Brian Eno) contribution was that fantastically Euro kick drum opening and keyboard line, and that gave us the clue as to where it should go next. The songs we record are always changing. They seem to have a new aspect depending on the time and place of their performance. Some need to be retired for a while so we can see them in a fresh way, but the best songs seem to always connect. We were also reclaiming, I guess, some of the best-known musical and sonic hallmarks of the band, on the basis that if everyone else was ripping us off, why couldn't we? (On "Beautiful Day")