U2

U2 became international stars with 1987's The Joshua Tree, their greatest critical and commercial success and one of the world's best-selling albums, with 25 million copies sold. The record produced their only US number-one singles, “With or Without You” and “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.” Formed in Dublin in 1976, the band consists of Bono on lead vocals, the Edge on lead guitar, keyboards and vocals, Adam Clayton on bass, and Larry Mullen Jr. on drums and percussion. The four met as teenage pupils at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, beginning with limited musical proficiency before signing to Island Records within four years and releasing their debut, Boy, in 1980.

Initially a post-punk group, U2 developed a sound built around Bono's expressive singing and the Edge's chiming, effects-treated guitar. Bono's writing has often used spiritual imagery alongside personal and sociopolitical subjects. War became the group's first UK number-one album in 1983, while “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Pride (In the Name of Love)” helped define its politically and socially conscious public profile. On 1984's The Unforgettable Fire, producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois brought a more abstract, ambient approach. U2's reputation as a live act grew internationally, with a prominent appearance at Live Aid in 1985.

After the backlash to the 1988 documentary and double album Rattle and Hum, U2 changed course in the 1990s. Achtung Baby in 1991 and the Zoo TV Tour introduced a style informed by alternative, industrial and electronic dance music, as well as a more ironic image. The experiment extended through Zooropa and Pop, whose PopMart Tour divided critics and audiences. The band returned to a more conventional mainstream sound with All That You Can't Leave Behind in 2000 and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb in 2004, both critical and commercial successes.

U2 have released 15 studio albums and sold an estimated 150 to 170 million records worldwide. Their large-scale touring has remained central to their career: the U2 360° Tour, staged from 2009 to 2011, held records for the highest-grossing and most-attended concert tour until 2019. Songs of Innocence, released through the iTunes Store in 2014, drew criticism for the pervasiveness of its distribution. In 2023, the band issued Songs of Surrender, featuring re-recorded songs, and opened the U2:UV Achtung Baby Live residency at Sphere in the Las Vegas Valley. Their awards include 22 Grammys, eight Brit Awards, four Ivor Novello Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. U2 entered the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005, while the band and its members have also worked on human rights and social-justice campaigns with organisations including Amnesty International, Jubilee 2000, the ONE Campaign, Product Red, War Child and Music Rising.