Beautiful Day - U2
(6 Nov 2017) BONO AMONG FIGURES NAMED IN LEAK OF TAX-HAVEN DOCUMENTS
Leaked papers revealing investments in tax havens by the world's wealthy suggest U2 frontman Bono used a company based in low-tax Malta to buy part of a shopping mall in Lithuania.
The Guardian newspaper says the "Paradise Papers" document trove reveals that the singer was an investor in Maltese company Nude Estates, which bought the Ausra shopping center in 2007.
Bono's spokeswoman told the paper that the rocker, whose real name is Paul Hewson, was a "passive minority investor in Nude Estates Malta Ltd., a company that was legally registered in Malta until it was voluntarily wound up in 2015."
The Irish band has faced past criticism over its tax arrangements.
In 2011 protesters inflated a giant balloon reading "U Pay Tax 2?" during U2's set at the Glastonbury Festival.
U2 Has been caught avoiding paying Income Tax and Royalty taxes by using Tax haven and they then fly around the world in a Private jet telling Government what they should spend there Tax revenues on to better the world. Make of this what you will. And I say this as an Irish man aboout an Irish Band. And a lot of Irish people are not happy with what they do.
Bono has admitted that the “touch me” in the lyrics, was lifted straight from a-ha’s The Sun Always Shines On TV. He said he had it in his head when he was writing Beautiful Day...he and The Edge are fans of a-ha, and when U2 performed live in Oslo they actually inserted the whole line “touch me, the sun always shines on TV..and sang it twice when performing Beautiful Day. Pal Waaktaar from a-ha, who wrote The Sun Always Shines On TV, was in the audience and was really surprised.
Like many tracks from All That You Can't Leave Behind, "Beautiful Day" harkens back to the group's past sound. The tone of the Edge's guitar was a subject of debate amongst the band members, as they disagreed on whether he should use a sound similar to that from their early career in the 1980s. The band's lead vocalist Bono explained that the upbeat track is about losing everything but still finding joy in what one has.
In an episode of the Sundance Channel's Iconoclast, R.E.M.'s lead singer Michael Stipe said, "I love that song. I wish I'd written it, and they know I wish I'd written it. It makes me dance; it makes me angry that I didn't write it."