quality:correction, stylistic:style_transfer
Musical style

In the 2000s, U2 returned to more stripped-down rock and pop sounds, with more conventional rhythms and reduced usage of synthesisers and effects, "reinvent themselves as a quality pop band", according to music journalist Chris Charlesworth. U2's music has been regarded as pop in analyses by writers David Hawke, Robert Christgau, and Niall Stokes. In an interview with Stokes for Hot Press, Bono explained the band's struggles in the 1980s among highbrow circles who patronised them for being a successful pop group, leading to their embrace of the term "pop" by the 1990s. Reviewing their 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind, Christgau remarked that, "since they'd been calling themselves pop for half of their two-decade run, maybe they'd better sit down and write some catchy songs. So they did." Summing up U2's stylistic evolution since Boy, Guitar journalist Owen Bailey said that they "have gone on to conquer the world's airwaves and arenas in a number of different incarnations, ranging from earnest, politically charged new-wave flagbearers to wide-eyed art-rock musicologists to purveyors of irony-laden alt-rock and ever onward", with the Edge remaining "at the heart of their sound".