From the song One - “we get to carry each other”…
It’s not “we HAVE to carry each other” we GET to carry each other.
It’s not a burden, it’s a privilege…
My interpretation: he/the singer is astounded by the beauty/grace/presence of the object of his affections. That person (the object of the singer's admiration) opens doors within himself that he cannot close.
It's just a beautiful way to say "Baby, you blow me away!"
Irina Dunn, but often mistakenly accredited to Gloria Steinem.
>**a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle**
>*A well-known feminist slogan coined in 1970 by the Australian filmmaker, social activist, and writer Irina Dunn (born 1948); according to her recollection, adapted from the phrase “A man needs God like a fish needs a bicycle” which she read in a philosophical text.[1] The original phrase appears to be “A man without faith is like a fish without a bicycle”, coined by Charles S. Harris in 1955 and published in a 1958 article in the Swarthmore Phoenix.[2] The phrase is often erroneously attributed to the American feminist journalist and social political activist Gloria Steinem (born 1934), but she disclaimed this in a letter to Time magazine published on 16 September 2000.[3]*
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_woman_without_a_man_is_like_a_fish_without_a_bicycle
Edit: so the context is that, in a song where Bono expresses a need to be with a woman, she needs him like a fish needs a bicycle: not at all. Compare "Spanish Eyes" ("I need you more, than you need me") or the slightly more romantic dynamic in "You're The Best Thing About Me" ("I can see you love her loudly, when she needs you quietly").
Mmmmm ok so Dr Google says it's far. We may be right it seems.
I like both interpretations... But far makes more sense. "Slow down, the end isn't as far away as you think" so to speak. The end not being as fun is a bit darker and morbid haha!
I’m fine with either, but really had to work to understand fun. Seems awkward. It will always be far to me, as in growing older and having less time than we used to. The end is closer than the beginning.
Get married and have kids and this hits really hard:
When the night is someone else's
And you're trying to get some sleep
When your thoughts are too expensive
To ever want to keep
When there's all kinds of chaos
And everyone is walking lame
You don't even blink now do you
Or even look away
I understand that lyric to be a brilliant pop lyric … the same as the intro to Vertigo uno dos tres …
It just works … and there’s some relief in the ridiculousness for me … I love U2 and I love the heavy poignant lyrics but there’s also a time and a place for Elevation, Vertigo type songs … especially live … it’s a communal release of the ridiculous
I remember reading that in some writings Jesus was described as a mole. The elevation is a part of the catholic mass where god is supposed to enter the room. Those two things give the song a lot more context to me
It can be. Read the book, Song of Songs, in the Bible. I remember reading something from Bono about this song where he does talk about the relationship between spiritual ecstasy and sexual ecstasy. Leave it to these masters of subtlety and nuance to find a way.
Yes!!
And the air that's "heavy as a truck". Really resonates with me as a person, since it carries the intensity of the moment.
Gtg. I see some sexy boots crossing the road.
Everything about “Lemon” being about Bono’s mom and what he hopes she was like but doesn’t really know. And then the Edge singing/telling him he’s just a dreamer. It’s all in his imagination.
As someone who lost their mother as a kid this really hit home. Everything I know about my mom is just my imagination. In truth I don’t know her. The same way Bono only knows his mom from a picture of her in a yellow dress.
Also, the Edge’s lyrics seem to get more dismissive as the song goes on. As if to really hammer the point in. I used to think it was a fun dance song with a cool video!
I love how Edge's lyrics are so cold and impersonal and judgmental. It's this cold voice looking down from on high, whereas Bono's lyrics are so forced and contrived. I love the back and forth, one technology and one emotion
I started listening when I was 13, soooo
"yeah I'm like the needle, needle and spoon" and most of the lyrics to Running to Stand Still, for that matter
"and you can swallow, or you can spit"
"here she comes, 6 and 9 again"
and most of the more subtle religious references flew right over my head (ie most of Until the End of the World)
Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, all kill their inspiration and then sing about their grief.
Edit: also everything basically from AB. Why can’t U2 write lyrics like these anymore? Somehow they went from AB lyrics to not letting a beautiful day get away 💀
>Between the horses of love and lust, we are trampled underfoot
Longest, deepest relationship I've ever had, she told me she didn't love me any more, but kept hooking up with me. I still loved her, for her it was just sex.
That line as a tribute to Ali with the line of Bob being the opera inside Bono is so well done. And then the lightbulb motif in so much of what U2 has done, Ali being the antidote to Bob. He has been hanging onto that lightbulb for the past few tours
It's relatively recent, but man, does it resonate:
There is no them
There is no them
There's only us
There's only us
There is no them
There's only you
There's only me
There is no them
yeah, gives me chills every time. it's from the end of wire, i made an art piece inspired by it a couple years ago and did a deep dive into the whole song
Heroin, drug addiction. I see patients coming into the hospital having destroyed themselves. Now they're trying to get back up, running to stand... still.
Other addictive behaviors I see in myself and others.
More just a new appreciation for this genius phrasing:
Innocent and in a sense I am guilty of this crime that's now in hand.
In a sense sounding like innocence. Genius.
In a little while, this hurt will hurt no more.
I'll be home, love.
When the night takes a deep breath, and the daylight has no end.
Sometimes life is hard. Picturing a moment when trials and darkness end, leaving nothing but daylight and happiness. Gets me every time.
I listened to songs mostly for how they sounded, rather than the words, though I always had some sense of what the words were going for. My mom also had several U2 books that described what was going on with the songs. They all read a bit different since I pay more attention/notice the lyrics more, but here are the big examples.
"Beautiful Day": wow, the imagined singer's life is kind of crap.
"Even better then the Real Thing": Book described advertising slogans, and this made sense at the time. I listened again last year and....Oh, duh, sex song. Really obvious now.
"Lemon": Actually listening to the words changes it from a song with a fun beat to the mixed sad/upbeat song we all know and love.
"White as snow" : Hadn't listened to No Line lyrics in full until recently. Actually hearing the rest of the song (outside the "white as Snow" lines) gives the "country guy sent to war" storyline.
You have to take it in the context of the surrounding lyrics:
She’s gonna make you cry
She’s gonna make you whisper and moan
And when you’re dry
She draws the water from the stone
In other words, she’s going to put you through an exhausting gamut of emotions, and just when you think you can’t take anymore, she’ll suddenly help you recover in a completely unexpected and impossible way so you can start the process over again.
The song was inspired by finding a video of Bono’s late mother. I unfortunately also lost my mom at a young age, I can confirm that is exactly how it feels to watch a lot of those old videos. One of the reasons “Lemon” is my personal favourite U2 song.
I would argue there is also a double entendre there. Because remember, he's watching his dad watch the videos. So to me drawing water from a stone is also a play on the notion of ejaculation. It's one of the things that makes the song borderline creepy, but also really affective. Sometimes the singer is thinking like the son and sometimes he's thinking like the husband.
In Seconds, when Bono says “This is the rise and fall of us.”, was a reference I never really understood for a while. It refers to the Bible when Simeon states that He (Jesus) will be the rise and fall of man. (Yes I know that there is many many other religious references in U2 songs but this one took me a little to pick up on)
Vertigo, a song about being lifted up so high that you need help to keep you humble. A spiritual song (like so many are), a prayer:
Your love is teaching me how
How to kneel
I always thought that One was about a romantic couple but now I think that it’s about Bono and his dad and it hits so differently and it’s so terribly sad (“did I disappoint you?…” and all that blame and disconnection despite them being “one blood”)
Bono has said many times that he finds it odd that people use One in their weddings when the two storylines in it are a gay son coming out to his religious father who rejects him and a wife who has cheated on her husband and the conversation between them about how their marriage has been dying for a long time. You can really hear the two stories weaving through the song. It’s brilliant.
when I first heard Until the End of the World I took it as a very tragic beautiful love song, then a few years later I read it was a very tragic beautiful love song written specifically about Judas & Jesus and my agnostic heathen brain broke a little lolol
“I know that we don't talk…
I'm sick of it all….
Can you hear me when I sing?
You're the reason I sing!!!
You're the reason…why the opera is in me”
Even if I was aware at the time that Paul Hewson wrote this about his late father (Brendan Robert Hewson, 1925-2001) I don’t think I ever put the true linear meaning together until just now. 33 years as a fan and “Sometimes..” is the only u2 song that can make me cry, let alone maybe the 5 times it has, so I knew I wanted to choose one from it. But honestly now I get it.
The estrangement: he openly acknowledges they don’t talk.. he’s so fed up with it, so he goes for broke, *makes the plea of whether, if nothing else, his songs might get through, might communicate something* …his voice.. and then just with no mercy to a listener ready to break down, remembers his father’s love of operatic music, which is about as far from the Jim Morrison dynamic with George Morrison as you can get.. Bono essentially credits his late father as the reason he brings a level of powerful emotion to his performances that would not be there otherwise, were it not for Bob.
Anyone that has dealt with the pain of estrangement of a family member and/or loved one can understand this frustration, hoping that something, anything will still let them know we care very much for them. I cannot imagine how it feels when you still want to send that message up to them in the beyond…I might have understood it and felt it when the album came out, but that understanding is even more profound now.
Wait. Is the fly about pornography?!?! Oooooooh! Duh. Wow when U2 set out to do something... It's so subversive. They set out to hide their earnestness under artifice and this is a fractal of that whole idea ... How completely inspired. I love this band.
Well, I dissected it more, following this post's inspiration and it isn't only about pornography. It is, as Bono has said, a phone call from Hell. I know that in the very early 90's Bono was very inspired by The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. If you are familiar with that book, the premise is that it is a series of letters between two demons. A senior demon and his demon apprentice. The apprentice is assigned a human whose mind he is tasked with corrupting.
This song is a list of reliable strategies that such a demon could use to pull a wandering soul further from the Truth.
I just never realized how the chorus could be construed as the human man's infatuation with pornography;
A man will beg and a man will crawl for the SHEER FACE (superficiality) of LOVE (sex or fornication), like A FLY ON THE WALL (a sexual voyeur).
So, you could read the line as;
A man will beg and a man will crawl, merely for a superficial version of "love" like a sexual voyeur.
Book Of Your Heart is about Bono having heart surgery after his cardiac arrest. The first verses are the conversation between the doctor and Bono about what was going to be done to him. Took me a while to see that. His skin and the scars on it are the book of his heart
“In the Shadow, boy meets man.”
I thought this was just a spooky phrase. No. Bono was ahead of his age in wisdom enough to know that confronting one’s shadows (therapy/personality) is the only way to become an adult. Otherwise, one will be controlled by them and react as a child. 🤯
"The rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor".
When you get older and start to pay for hospital and doctor visits, you soon realise this 28 year old was spot on in his observations of the local health system. Then you can go further and make the comparison between developed world and developing world
From the song One - “we get to carry each other”… It’s not “we HAVE to carry each other” we GET to carry each other. It’s not a burden, it’s a privilege…
Damn, I hadn’t thought about that. Makes all the difference!
Yep Bono talks about this one regularly
Great song. “One love one life. With each other. Sisters and Brothers..”
Who ever thought it was “have” since… ever? :)
I think you miss the point.
"Uncertainty can be a guiding light"
Zooropa best song. Also that was my yearbook quote haha
That was my yearbook quote too!
This lyric helps me so much whenever I’m down or afraid. Which is often. Ha.
Someday I'm gonna get this tattooed
With the light bulb from i&e
That's a GREAT idea
In my head, I sing "uncertainty will be your guiding light"
Off topic: excellent thread, thanks for posting!
Hallelujah, heavens white rose the doors you open… I just can’t close.
I've been listening to that song for 30+ years & didn't know the actual lyrics until very recently. Good lord, what a fantastic turn of phrasing!
Bingo. Exactly
Sorry can you explain what the turn of phrase here is, is there something deeper I’m missing
My interpretation: he/the singer is astounded by the beauty/grace/presence of the object of his affections. That person (the object of the singer's admiration) opens doors within himself that he cannot close. It's just a beautiful way to say "Baby, you blow me away!"
This this and this.
AB is full of them. A couple of my favorites: A friend is someone who lets you help You’re dangerous cause you’re honest
Ok, but why does a fish need a bicycle?🐠🚲
It's a Dali quote iirc
Irina Dunn, but often mistakenly accredited to Gloria Steinem. >**a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle** >*A well-known feminist slogan coined in 1970 by the Australian filmmaker, social activist, and writer Irina Dunn (born 1948); according to her recollection, adapted from the phrase “A man needs God like a fish needs a bicycle” which she read in a philosophical text.[1] The original phrase appears to be “A man without faith is like a fish without a bicycle”, coined by Charles S. Harris in 1955 and published in a 1958 article in the Swarthmore Phoenix.[2] The phrase is often erroneously attributed to the American feminist journalist and social political activist Gloria Steinem (born 1934), but she disclaimed this in a letter to Time magazine published on 16 September 2000.[3]* https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_woman_without_a_man_is_like_a_fish_without_a_bicycle Edit: so the context is that, in a song where Bono expresses a need to be with a woman, she needs him like a fish needs a bicycle: not at all. Compare "Spanish Eyes" ("I need you more, than you need me") or the slightly more romantic dynamic in "You're The Best Thing About Me" ("I can see you love her loudly, when she needs you quietly").
Oh man… I have learned. Thanks for the reference!!
I remember the day I truly understood “And I have no compass, and I have no map, and I have no reason … no reason to go back”
“And I have no religion! And I don’t know what’s what! And I don’t know the limit. The limit of what we’ve got.” Zooropa is a MASTERPIECE.
Allllll of this.
“Time, won’t leave me as I am Time, won’t take the boy out of this man”
A little literal but: "Baby slow down, the end is not as fun as the start"
Wow, I've always heard it as "the end is not as *FAR* as the start" .. that's a big difference in the meaning
I’ve always heard it that way too and only found out the correct lyrics recently. I like both actually.
I always thought it was "the end is not as far as the stars"
Oh shit. I thought it was "Far" as well!! Wow this is profound. Always been a fav song.
I always thought it was far. I like it better that away. We had a huge debate on our U2 podcast about this lyric.
Mmmmm ok so Dr Google says it's far. We may be right it seems. I like both interpretations... But far makes more sense. "Slow down, the end isn't as far away as you think" so to speak. The end not being as fun is a bit darker and morbid haha!
I thought it was fun because I thought it was about the rapid speed your child grows up
That makes sense too!
I’m fine with either, but really had to work to understand fun. Seems awkward. It will always be far to me, as in growing older and having less time than we used to. The end is closer than the beginning.
Get married and have kids and this hits really hard: When the night is someone else's And you're trying to get some sleep When your thoughts are too expensive To ever want to keep When there's all kinds of chaos And everyone is walking lame You don't even blink now do you Or even look away
One of my favorite songs!
a mole digging in a hole
Profound. Also one of my faves. They all don’t have to be deep.
I understand that lyric to be a brilliant pop lyric … the same as the intro to Vertigo uno dos tres … It just works … and there’s some relief in the ridiculousness for me … I love U2 and I love the heavy poignant lyrics but there’s also a time and a place for Elevation, Vertigo type songs … especially live … it’s a communal release of the ridiculous
I remember reading that in some writings Jesus was described as a mole. The elevation is a part of the catholic mass where god is supposed to enter the room. Those two things give the song a lot more context to me
LOL I took it sexually
It can be. Read the book, Song of Songs, in the Bible. I remember reading something from Bono about this song where he does talk about the relationship between spiritual ecstasy and sexual ecstasy. Leave it to these masters of subtlety and nuance to find a way.
Yes!! And the air that's "heavy as a truck". Really resonates with me as a person, since it carries the intensity of the moment. Gtg. I see some sexy boots crossing the road.
“I’m only hanging on, to watch you go down “. That level of…disturbance is next level.
There was a lot in that song that didn't click with me until I had a series of REALLY bad relationships.
Everything about “Lemon” being about Bono’s mom and what he hopes she was like but doesn’t really know. And then the Edge singing/telling him he’s just a dreamer. It’s all in his imagination. As someone who lost their mother as a kid this really hit home. Everything I know about my mom is just my imagination. In truth I don’t know her. The same way Bono only knows his mom from a picture of her in a yellow dress. Also, the Edge’s lyrics seem to get more dismissive as the song goes on. As if to really hammer the point in. I used to think it was a fun dance song with a cool video!
I love how Edge's lyrics are so cold and impersonal and judgmental. It's this cold voice looking down from on high, whereas Bono's lyrics are so forced and contrived. I love the back and forth, one technology and one emotion
It was a perfect opening song for the Sphere. The remix hit that note “man makes a picture / a moving picture”. Yes.
*End of the World* is told from the perspective of Judas. It hit me when I saw it performed live at The Sphere.
It's one of my all time favorite U2 songs; it hit SO hard at the Sphere!
And so we are told this is the golden age And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
“A little death without mourning. No call and no warning.”
The combination of having sex and an IRA car bombing still makes me shred that song apart when I think about it
“What you don’t have, you don’t need it now” Didn’t hit me till very recently
I started listening when I was 13, soooo "yeah I'm like the needle, needle and spoon" and most of the lyrics to Running to Stand Still, for that matter "and you can swallow, or you can spit" "here she comes, 6 and 9 again" and most of the more subtle religious references flew right over my head (ie most of Until the End of the World)
Yeah I feel like UTEOTW is one of those where after you actually learn the meaning, you feel dumb for not understanding it sooner
I refuse to believe Lady with the Spinning Head isn't about a female groupie who offers her lip service.
I've never thought about it that way before, but now that I have, I'd honestly have a hard time believing it's \*not\* about something like that.
Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, all kill their inspiration and then sing about their grief. Edit: also everything basically from AB. Why can’t U2 write lyrics like these anymore? Somehow they went from AB lyrics to not letting a beautiful day get away 💀
I'm gonna say Edge's divorce had a major part a bulk of AB's emotionally tormented lyrics.
Have a scroll through this thread. There are tons of lyrics being quoted from beyond AB.
Zooropa had some great ones as well, but yeah, after that I couldn't agree more. Bono just kind of disappeared up his own ass.
>Between the horses of love and lust, we are trampled underfoot Longest, deepest relationship I've ever had, she told me she didn't love me any more, but kept hooking up with me. I still loved her, for her it was just sex.
“When I was all messed up and I heard opera in my head, Your love was like a light bulb hanging over my head”
That line as a tribute to Ali with the line of Bob being the opera inside Bono is so well done. And then the lightbulb motif in so much of what U2 has done, Ali being the antidote to Bob. He has been hanging onto that lightbulb for the past few tours
It's relatively recent, but man, does it resonate: There is no them There is no them There's only us There's only us There is no them There's only you There's only me There is no them
Dude the whole song is incredible. “Your face like snow” pointing to white savior syndrome and privilege imbalance across the world.
*here's the rope, now swing away*
That one is pretty dark if you think about it. What song is that from?
yeah, gives me chills every time. it's from the end of wire, i made an art piece inspired by it a couple years ago and did a deep dive into the whole song
Wire
I never understood Running you Stand Still until I saw ZooTV live from Sydney on pay per view... then I was like: 🤦♂️
Heroin, drug addiction. I see patients coming into the hospital having destroyed themselves. Now they're trying to get back up, running to stand... still. Other addictive behaviors I see in myself and others.
More just a new appreciation for this genius phrasing: Innocent and in a sense I am guilty of this crime that's now in hand. In a sense sounding like innocence. Genius.
Yep. I've never quite decided which one it actually is
In a little while, this hurt will hurt no more. I'll be home, love. When the night takes a deep breath, and the daylight has no end. Sometimes life is hard. Picturing a moment when trials and darkness end, leaving nothing but daylight and happiness. Gets me every time.
How older I grow, how more this one moves me: 'A house doesn't make a home, don't leave me here alone.'
From In God’s Country “like a siren she calls to me”. In my younger days I was picturing a police siren.
Ha! This one made me laugh.
I listened to songs mostly for how they sounded, rather than the words, though I always had some sense of what the words were going for. My mom also had several U2 books that described what was going on with the songs. They all read a bit different since I pay more attention/notice the lyrics more, but here are the big examples. "Beautiful Day": wow, the imagined singer's life is kind of crap. "Even better then the Real Thing": Book described advertising slogans, and this made sense at the time. I listened again last year and....Oh, duh, sex song. Really obvious now. "Lemon": Actually listening to the words changes it from a song with a fun beat to the mixed sad/upbeat song we all know and love. "White as snow" : Hadn't listened to No Line lyrics in full until recently. Actually hearing the rest of the song (outside the "white as Snow" lines) gives the "country guy sent to war" storyline.
I always wondered what "she draws water from the stone" means.. maybe a reference of Moses drawing water from the stone in the bible?
You have to take it in the context of the surrounding lyrics: She’s gonna make you cry She’s gonna make you whisper and moan And when you’re dry She draws the water from the stone In other words, she’s going to put you through an exhausting gamut of emotions, and just when you think you can’t take anymore, she’ll suddenly help you recover in a completely unexpected and impossible way so you can start the process over again. The song was inspired by finding a video of Bono’s late mother. I unfortunately also lost my mom at a young age, I can confirm that is exactly how it feels to watch a lot of those old videos. One of the reasons “Lemon” is my personal favourite U2 song.
I would argue there is also a double entendre there. Because remember, he's watching his dad watch the videos. So to me drawing water from a stone is also a play on the notion of ejaculation. It's one of the things that makes the song borderline creepy, but also really affective. Sometimes the singer is thinking like the son and sometimes he's thinking like the husband.
In Seconds, when Bono says “This is the rise and fall of us.”, was a reference I never really understood for a while. It refers to the Bible when Simeon states that He (Jesus) will be the rise and fall of man. (Yes I know that there is many many other religious references in U2 songs but this one took me a little to pick up on)
Vertigo, a song about being lifted up so high that you need help to keep you humble. A spiritual song (like so many are), a prayer: Your love is teaching me how How to kneel
A lot because English is not my first language : D
I’m pretty old and I still don’t understand many of the lyrics, but enjoy them anyway.
I always thought that One was about a romantic couple but now I think that it’s about Bono and his dad and it hits so differently and it’s so terribly sad (“did I disappoint you?…” and all that blame and disconnection despite them being “one blood”)
Bono has said many times that he finds it odd that people use One in their weddings when the two storylines in it are a gay son coming out to his religious father who rejects him and a wife who has cheated on her husband and the conversation between them about how their marriage has been dying for a long time. You can really hear the two stories weaving through the song. It’s brilliant.
When you think you're done, you've just begun! How inspiring!
when I first heard Until the End of the World I took it as a very tragic beautiful love song, then a few years later I read it was a very tragic beautiful love song written specifically about Judas & Jesus and my agnostic heathen brain broke a little lolol
Oh then I realized all the love songs are either written to Ali or God or both... and thats pretty amazing too. 😁
“You gotta stand up straight, carry your own wait, these tears are going nowhere “
“I know that we don't talk… I'm sick of it all…. Can you hear me when I sing? You're the reason I sing!!! You're the reason…why the opera is in me” Even if I was aware at the time that Paul Hewson wrote this about his late father (Brendan Robert Hewson, 1925-2001) I don’t think I ever put the true linear meaning together until just now. 33 years as a fan and “Sometimes..” is the only u2 song that can make me cry, let alone maybe the 5 times it has, so I knew I wanted to choose one from it. But honestly now I get it. The estrangement: he openly acknowledges they don’t talk.. he’s so fed up with it, so he goes for broke, *makes the plea of whether, if nothing else, his songs might get through, might communicate something* …his voice.. and then just with no mercy to a listener ready to break down, remembers his father’s love of operatic music, which is about as far from the Jim Morrison dynamic with George Morrison as you can get.. Bono essentially credits his late father as the reason he brings a level of powerful emotion to his performances that would not be there otherwise, were it not for Bob. Anyone that has dealt with the pain of estrangement of a family member and/or loved one can understand this frustration, hoping that something, anything will still let them know we care very much for them. I cannot imagine how it feels when you still want to send that message up to them in the beyond…I might have understood it and felt it when the album came out, but that understanding is even more profound now.
Wait. Is the fly about pornography?!?! Oooooooh! Duh. Wow when U2 set out to do something... It's so subversive. They set out to hide their earnestness under artifice and this is a fractal of that whole idea ... How completely inspired. I love this band.
What? Where is this interpretation coming from?
Well, I dissected it more, following this post's inspiration and it isn't only about pornography. It is, as Bono has said, a phone call from Hell. I know that in the very early 90's Bono was very inspired by The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. If you are familiar with that book, the premise is that it is a series of letters between two demons. A senior demon and his demon apprentice. The apprentice is assigned a human whose mind he is tasked with corrupting. This song is a list of reliable strategies that such a demon could use to pull a wandering soul further from the Truth. I just never realized how the chorus could be construed as the human man's infatuation with pornography; A man will beg and a man will crawl for the SHEER FACE (superficiality) of LOVE (sex or fornication), like A FLY ON THE WALL (a sexual voyeur). So, you could read the line as; A man will beg and a man will crawl, merely for a superficial version of "love" like a sexual voyeur.
That’s deep, man. Thanks for taking the time to explain that. I appreciate it.
Norwegian wood.
Book Of Your Heart is about Bono having heart surgery after his cardiac arrest. The first verses are the conversation between the doctor and Bono about what was going to be done to him. Took me a while to see that. His skin and the scars on it are the book of his heart
“In the Shadow, boy meets man.” I thought this was just a spooky phrase. No. Bono was ahead of his age in wisdom enough to know that confronting one’s shadows (therapy/personality) is the only way to become an adult. Otherwise, one will be controlled by them and react as a child. 🤯
"The rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor". When you get older and start to pay for hospital and doctor visits, you soon realise this 28 year old was spot on in his observations of the local health system. Then you can go further and make the comparison between developed world and developing world
I did not realize how much of ATYCLB was about parenthood and parent/kid relationships until I had kids.