| U2 – Mysterious Ways Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
Han Solo said: "Where do you people get all these religious connections. "I have cursed thy rod and staff, they no longer comfort me." - Love Rescue Me" Well, Captain Solo -- isn't that a religious connection in and of itself? The full phrase was, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow, yet I will fear no evil. I have cursed thy rod and staff, they no longer comfort me." It's obviously a phrase of doubt, yes, but the phrase itself is a play on a Bible verse; the 23rd Psalm, to be specific: "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." Opposite meaning, but only a person who knows the Bible would be able to write it. Doubt is a part of life. Bono has said publicly that he is against organized religion, but he definitely believes in God. |
|
| Arrested Development – Since the Last Time Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
The title track from AD's new album, released September '06 - "Since the Last Time." I think the meaning in this one is self-explanatory. :) |
|
| Arrested Development – Night Time Demons Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
The anti-gangsta rap. Musically it's different from AD's usual stuff because it *sounds* like a gangsta rap. But the words - as usual for AD - are anti-gangsta. This is from their 2004 album, "Among the Trees." |
|
| Arrested Development – Tennessee Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
Actually Speech is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The song is about "Tennessee" because when his grandmother and his only brother died (within a week of each other) he started thinking about why his family suffered two tragedies so close together and he realized what kind of a mess African Americans are in... and when he took his troubles to God, he saw where his people came from, and where they are, and how far was left to go. He uses "Tennessee" because it's a southern state... much of the imagery in the song is based on slavery and the way black people were treated during colonial days... he speaks of Tennessee both as a rural area full of nature (which Arrested Development loves -- nature) and also a place where so many of his people have suffered and died ("climb the trees my forefathers hung from,") and so the movement of his people out of the rural South into the ghettos of the urban North is not, he decides, much of a step up in the world. And he thinks the problem now is that they're too far from Nature... that nature holds the answers to peace and happiness. So on the one hand. the South was a place of suffering but it is also a place of wonders that he feels his people need to embrace... "Now I see the importance of history / why my people be in the mess that we be / many journeys to freedom made in vain / my brothers on the corner playing ghetto games..." |
|
| Arrested Development – Tennessee Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
This song was the reason I bought "3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life Of..." and it's the reason I kept buying all of AD's music. Speech is a great lyricist... his songs have unique mix of spirituality, militant preaching, and social conscience. He's an intellectual. AD has always been vastly underrated and underappreciated. Hell, I'm a white guy and I make no apologies for it... but I'm also a huge fan of AD. I just shelled out nearly $70 for two new AD albums, "Among the Trees" and "Since the Last Time..." from Amazon.com... import albums released on indie labels... but the good news is, AD is back. Southern Fried Funk once again! |
|
| Arrested Development – Give A Man A Fish Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
Heh. Yeah, and "Malcolm X" was a movie about some Muslim guy. What the hell? Let's look at something more than the surface, shall we? "Give A Man A Fish" is about African Americans making their way in this country. The first verse is about AD making their living on their music... and having worked very, very hard to do so. The second verse is looking outward... African Americans getting out of the ghetto, they need to do it the same way... working VERY hard, and taking a stand for what's right. Because the government isn't going to help them, it's only going to throw them a bone once in a while. Nothing very helpful. "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, he'll eat forever." It's an old saying, and it is correctly applied in this song. Speech is always VERY clear on where he stands with gangstaz. In "Ease My Mind" from 1994's Zingalamaduni, he refers to ganstaz as "step 'n fetch 'n." Those are some hard words, but his point is well made. Africans shooting each other in the streets is not going to help anybody, least of all Africans. "Save those rounds for a revolution," he says. It's a shame AD didn't make a bigger mark in the hip-hop culture. But they're still making music, if you can find their albums. |
|
| U2 – Desire Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
I don't know that it's that particular song that inspired Mirrorball Man, but I know Bono hates that type of preacher in general - he references them in that line in Desire, and also in the Rattle & Hum recording of "Bullet," he makes a remark about "well the God that I believe in isn't short on cash, mister." And Mirrorball Man of course morphed into Macphisto for the rest of the ZOO TV tour, and I have a recording of a Dublin show where Macphisto sings "Desire." And that brings us full circle. ;) |
|
| U2 – Desire Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
This song, like most of Bono's lyrics, has at least a double meaning. "Desire" of course can refer to the desire, or desperation, that drives people to crime... to drugs (the needle and spoon - i.e. heroin) for stealing money (over the counter with a shotgun) the desire for salvation that lets people get suckered by charlatan televangelists (a preacher stealing hearts at a traveling show, for love or money, money, money...) BUT... Here's the kicker. Remember this song, like all of the new songs on Rattle and Hum, was written while U2 was touring America to promote the Joshua Tree... they stopped in Sun Studios in Memphis, they visited Graceland, they went to Harlem.... they got around. Well, as it happens... Desire is the name of a Welfare Project in New Orleans. A really bad, crime-ridden neighborhood. Now go look at the words again. |
|
| U2 – So Cruel Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
I spent six years in the situation that this song is about. My God, it hurts. And the lyrics are indeed brilliant. My favorite lyric is "She wears my love like a see-thru dress / her lips say one thing, her movements something else" Also, "I disappeared in you, you disappeared from me / I gave you everything you ever wanted, it wasn't what you wanted" My God... this song... this... 1.) What they had is in ruins... He won't let her destroy him... he bent over backwards to please her, and it drove her away... she doesn't like being taken care of, she doesn't think she's worth it, she uses up men and moves on because she can't stand being loved but needs to be loved... she's a nasty, frigid bitch... 2.) The more you try to hold on to her, the more you get dippy-in-love, and the more she runs away... she's so beautiful, and so damaged, and you just want to take care of her... and she pushes you away, runs off with another guy... but won't let you off the hook... she is a nasty, frigid bitch. The bridge: She puts his love on like a sexy dress when she wants to feel good about herself, but she just makes it complicated... she'll tell him she doesn't love him, but she comes running to him when she hurts... she'll tell him she needs him but she'll run away again. How can something so beautiful hurt so bad? How can she make love into something so damned horrible? 3.) In the end you can't let go, and you're not sure if it's because you're afraid of losing her or because you still love her after all this... it's like an addiction now... and she thinks you're obsessed with her but she's the one who did this to you... she won't let you go... you've tried...and you just get run over. She is one nasty, frigid bitch. This could indeed be about Aislinn O'Sullivan (Edge's first wife). It also sounds like my most recent ex-girlfriend. The hell of it is, I sitll love her. We don't talk anymore, I'm free of her, and I'm better off for it, but I miss her every day and I think I will for the rest of my life. How do you undo six years of emotional torment? I don't honestly know. She's so cruel... |
|
| U2 – Mysterious Ways Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
achtungbaby02 said: "As much as I would love to think this song is about John the Baptist or the Holy Spirit [and admittedly, these interpretations make a lot of sense], for me the song is too flirty, sexy and fun to be a religious song." Why can't a religious song be flirty and sexy? Bono once said, "We're always asked to choose between the flesh and the spirit. Well I don't know anyone who isn't both." U2 songs since Achtung Baby tend to contain both religious material and some rather cheeky sexual references. So what? The Bible is the raunchiest book on the planet. And Salomé WAS a bellydancer. Speaking of Salomé, wasn't that a sexy song? Shake it, shake it, shake it, Salomé? That's a Bible reference too. Also that fits nicely with Morleigh's presence onstage for Mysterious Ways during the ZOO TV tour, no? |
|
| U2 – Acrobat Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
In 1993 I was a senior in high school and I had to read George Orwell's 1984, which turned out to be one of the best books I've ever read. Anyway, at the time I'd been reading a lot of William Gibson and between Gibson and Orwell and the U2 I'd been listening to at that point (Achtung, Zooropa) I realized that there was sort of a thematic thing happening that I could not have planned any better if I had tried. Anyhow, "Acrobat" reminded me of Winston and Julia's clandestine sex romps that were, in that world, completely illegal. Because this song is about taking chances and doing things that are generally considered ill-advised but which seem quite necessary to your well-being in spite of the rules. It's about the freedom to be different, the freedom to write, to dream, to dance, to fuck, to laugh. Plus, it's got one hell of a great rhythm. It reminds me of a spiral, a gyration, a controlled dive that picks up momentum until things start to bust off in the inertia and you go ass-over-elbows into a new world. A total destruction of the established order. BOOM. And don't let the bastards grind you down. |
|
| U2 – Zoo Station Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Yeah it's a song about the passage of time, it's also a song about change, and about being, well, ready to handle the change, ready to deal with the future. This really, as others have pointed out, is just U2 announcing that they're the new and improved U2, and all bets are off. | |
| U2 – Lemon Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
The video is based on the artwork of Edweard Muybridge, who invented one of the earliest motion picture devices. It was called, interestingly... the Zoopraxiscope. If you're familiar with Muybridge, the video is hilarious. |
|
| U2 – Miami Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
Why would anyone hate this song? More to the point, why would anyone hate "Playboy Mansion" which is as much about LA as it is Miami... or "Velvet Dress," which is the sexiest song ever. What the hell? The point of nearly EVERY song on POP is the artificiality of American culture, that we Americans strive to be more artificial. Plastic surgery, sexier clothes, shinier car, let's look like movie stars, don't tell me anything important or deep, I don't want to know. Pardon me while I put more gel in my hair. If you don't like these songs you're either not very bright, or you're so amazingly vapid in the broader sense that the songs describe you better than you will ever know. |
|
| U2 – Holy Joe Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
Freaks. :p Obviously the song is about a self-righteous bastard who preaches humility and a born-again religiosity but is, in fact, two-faced and full of shit. It's the mirroball man all over again. It's Bono riffing on the weaselly gloss-coated hypocrisy of televangelists. "Well the God I believe in isn't short on cash, mister." |
|
| U2 – Are You Gonna Wait Forever? Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
u2hype: "Has anybody noticed how very similar it sounds to "All Because of You"? The guitar, especially in the beginning is almost exact" That's often the case with b-sides because U2's songwriting process is often non-linear, they jam and record what they do and then they go back and start refining each of those things into tunes... what happens is pieces of songs show up again in unused tracks or in earlier versions of songs... As an example, "Always" is musically almost identical to "Beautiful Day," and "Lady With the Spinning Head" ends almost the same was as "The Fly." |
|
| U2 – I'm Not Your Baby Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
On one hand I'm surprised nobody has commented on this song, but then I think a lot of people have never heard it. Sinead O'Connor guest-starred on this track, as well. It's from the soundtrack to a Wim Wenders movie called "The End of Violence," which is a fantastic soundtrack, actually. It has not only this U2 song but a clever track by Tom Waits called "Little Drop of Poison" which showed up many years later in the soundtrack to Shrek 2, but I was among the few who knew it did not originate there. This album also had Roy Orbison's last song, "You May Feel Me Crying," and a lot of other great songs. Bailare el Marecumbe! Actually maybe the reason people haven't commented on this one is that the words to this one are pretty self-explanatory... |
|
| U2 – The Fly Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| In Bono's own words: "It's like a phone call from Hell -- but the guy liked it there." | |
| U2 – Mysterious Ways Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
This song is also, in part, based on an Oscar Wilde play called "Salome." Salome is the name given to the dancer from Herod's court who demanded the death of John the Baptist. "Johnny" is John the Baptist, of course. In the play, there are repeated references to the full moon driving men crazy, and Salome in her cold beauty driving men crazy... it is a short play. John is in prison and Salome finds him there and tries to charm him, but he sort of shuts her down, and she gets mad at him. And then, in th heat of the night and the sweltering stare of the full moon, Herod and his men look for some entertainment, and Salome bellydances for them. Herod is, of course, pleased and offers Salome any payment that she can think of. She asks for the head of John the Baptist. So in this reading, the "she" and the referenes to the moon are about Salome, and John is "living underground" because he is in prison. And the moon and Salome drive men mad with lust... she moves in Mysterious Ways. |
|
| U2 – Kite Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
Bono's father, Bob, was laying in the hospital dying. Bono knew he was going to lose him soon, and this song, "Kite," was written for Bob. It was about having let go of someone you really love. In this case, Bono letting go of his Dad. |
|
| U2 – Salome Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I love this song, too. I assume the reason it didn't make it on the Achtung Baby album is because "Mysterious Ways" is about the same thing from another angle. | |
| U2 – Elevation Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
This song is about SEX. Remember the icon next to the song's lyrics in the album booklet? A man and a woman holding hands, the arrows pointing up? Observe: "High, higher than the sun" Come on, funny feeling. Also, popping a woody. As in, it gets "high." "You shoot me from a gun" You make me splooge. "I need you to elevate me here" Make me hard. "At the corner of your lips" A little farther south, cheif. At the corner of her lips? Clitoris. "As the orbit of your hips" Bump and grind. "Eclipse, you elevate my soul" I feel good when I'm inside you. "I've got no self-control" I can't stop, I can't stop "Been living like a mole" Spelunking. "Now going down, excavation" I lick pooter. "I and I in the sky" I got good wood and I feel good. "You make me feel like I can fly So high, elevation" Etcetera. "A star lit up like a cigar" What do you call the burning tip of a cigar or cigarette? CHERRY. Also, I said "burning tip." "Strung out like a guitar" Taut and tense. "Maybe you can educate my mind" Be gentle with me, it's my first time. "Explain all these controls Can't sing but I've got soul" I'm fumbling around here but my heart's in it. Also, that loud off-key moaning sound is entirely normal in this context. "The goal is elevation" Oh yes, it certainly is. |
|
| U2 – All Because of You Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
The song is totally about God. Also, the "death" theme on the album should be attributed to Bono dealing with the loss of his father, Bob. Then again, like "I Will Follow" and "MoFo" before it, this song is also about Iris Hewson, Bono's Mom, who died when Bono was just 14. I mean the lyrics all have a dual-nature to them, as Bono's lyrics often do. "All because of you, I AM" is clearly a reference to God, esepcially on an album which has, as its last track, a song entitled "Yahweh." But it also is about Iris... his mother, "All because of you, I am ("I am" here meaning "I exist"). All of the lyrics work in that dual nature, especially "Everything was ugly but your beautiful face," which can be God or Iris. To the person who said the following: "Personally, I think it's a song about birth, which can be seen clearly at the end with these lines: I'm alive, I'm being born and I just arrived, I'm at the door of the place I started out from and I want back inside, All Because Of you, All because of you, All because of you I am" I have to say that this is essentialy correct but also somewhat a shallow reading. Look deeper. On the mother subject, Iris, yes, that is a reference to birth... but it is something else, too, because he says "I want back inside." Where does every mammal enter the world from? From a vagina. So if he wants back inside... well, that is the nature of sex, isn't it? Trying to get closer to a person by sharing that most personal of connections. Trying to get inside. It doesn't have to connote incest, it works in a broader sense. Or, as a friend of mine once said upon looking a picture of a beautiful woman in a revealing outfit, "damn, that makes me homesick." But it also works in a spiritual sense, doesn't it... where you came from... from Heaven? From Nirvana? Wanting back inside? The life cycle, birth and death. Bono once said this phrase in Rolling Stone, back in the 80's. "God. Light. Sex." I think that sums up his lyrics in general. |
|
| U2 – Discothèque Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
I hate when people bash "POP" and the POPMart '97 Tour... POP is supposed to the be the American Zooropa, can you get that? The funny thing is is that the only people who hate this album are Americans. It sold insanely well all over the rest of the world. Look, Zooropa was a bit of satire about the state of affairs in Europe at the time. The European Union was forming (and now they're all using the same damn money, I might add - breaks my heart that the Irish are no longer trading bills with James Joyce's face on them) and Bono was thinking, hell, what happened last time somebody tried to unite all of Europe under one flag? Well, that was Hitler and his nazi party, and that was bad mojo all the way around. So the ZOO TV shows began with Bono goose-stepping in front of the European Union flag. LOL. Okay, so what does this have to do with POPMart? POPMart was about capitalism, dammit. If ZOO TV was the European propaganda channel (The latest and greatest in software, hardware, and mens' wear!) then POPMart was the American propaganda channel... the boys dressed as superheroes, dancing under a golden arch, with a big-ass TV screen and an olive skewered on a swizzle stick? And that gigantic lemon mothership? Yes it was funny. It was SUPPOSED to be funny. It was American culture through the eyes of some European guys. Or as Bono put it. "This is our church... made up of little bits and pieces of America. You know, we, we come to America and we drive around the cities and we see all these buildings... buildings that look so ugly during the day... but oh so beautiful at night." POPMart was Pop Art. U2 doing Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Roy Lichtenstein. It was brilliant, it was a brilliant tour, and a brilliant album about seeking salvation and satisfaction in the shiny, shallow veneer of capitalist culture. From "Playboy Mansion," about trying to get ahead, drive the biggest car, buy the biggest house, score the hottest woman, to "Discothéaue," about trying to find God in the drug-bleared night of the dance hall. If you don't like this record, it's not because it isn't good. It's because you don't get it. And that's sad, because it really isn't that complicated. |
|
| U2 – Pride (In the Name of Love) Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
I don't get all the arguing. MLK is certainly referenced in this song. Jesus is certainly referenced in this song. And yes, it can just as easily apply to William Wallace or anyone else who has ever died for a good cause. That's more or less exactly the point. Also, that "Free at last" part is not just from the end of the "I Have a Dream" speech, it was in fact an old "Negro Spiritual" song, which King was quoting: "Free at least, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last." If am not much mistaken, those words or some variation of them appear on King's tombstone. |
|
| U2 – Love Is Blindness Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I've always felt the song was talking at least in part about suicide... "squeeze the handle...blow out the candle" would be the life-taking action itself. Blowing out the candle being a reference to death. | |
| U2 – City of Blinding Lights Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
A friend of mine had another theory. And lyrically it works as well as any of the others. The "City of Blinding Lights" could be heaven. And the song could be one of grief - whether Bono grieving for his (then recently) deceased father, or the family of 9/11 victims grieving their loved ones... "Oh you look so beautiful tonight in the City of Blinding Lights" "What happened to the beauty I had inside of me" refers to the way that love turns to a festering grief when someone you love is gone... The song works perfectly in that context as well. Of course the wonderful thing about Bono's lyrics is the way they are always open to personal applicability. |
|
| U2 – Big Girls Are Best Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
There's a dual meaning of course... "big girls" doesn't have to mean fat girls. It also can mean older women. As in "You're a big girl now." Opposite of a little girl. I mean we put a lot of emphasis on youth and the nubile beauty of young girls, but young girls are fickle and don't know who they are or what they want. Older women know what they want and who they are and are comfortable with it. They make better companions. Big girls are best. |
|
| U2 – Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
Addendum: And if you don't burn out, you fade away into obscurity after a few hits, like MC Hammer or Boy George. Or, you know, Britney Spears. If you're a celebrity that's your fear, I think... if you don't die young, will you be washed up after a couple of hits? I mean not many acts have the longevity of Springsteen or U2. |
|
| U2 – Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
I can't believe nobody gets this song. 1.) It's not about Batman. 2.) The Jesus reference is entirely intentional. U2 does that. 3.) It's about fame. During the POPMart tour they played this one in concert. On the giant screen they put up a lot of images of dead celebrities. Marilyn Monroe (Warhol-style), Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, John Belushi, Kurt Cobain... The message could not be clearer. The video, with the Batman: TAS style animation made a little story out of Bono being split into The Fly and Mr. Macphisto. Because metaphorically that is what the song is about. The Fly and Mac were Bono's satirical take on celebrity... The Fly being the obnoxious prick who thinks he rules the world because he sold a few records, and MacPhisto being the same guy old, fat, tired, and playing Vegas. Elvis in the sideburn, jumpsuit years, a few cheeseburgers too many. When it's become just a joke. "It takes a crowd to cry." And yes, there's the Screwtape angle, and Bono's conviction "Mock the devil, and he will flee from you." So "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" is sort of the conundrum of being famous. A media darling, a pop-cultural icon, prostituted to the public and finally used up and cast aside, forgotten, or dead. The dead celebrities onscreen were meant to remind us just how lethal fame can be. Because that kind of life is not really what human beings are meant for. People need privacy, and the freedom to fuck up without being crucified by the media. Fame can be a burden as much as a blessing, and if you don't believe that, ask Courtney Love and Frances Bean Cobain, because there's a husband and father missing from that equation on account of he couldn't handle the life he'd made for himself or the mess he'd made of it in trying to drown his problems in heroin. The irony of course is that in death, Kurt Cobain remained an icon and the fans - and kids who hadn't even graduated from Sesame Street records before Kurt shot himself - tried to saint the man in the mid-90's. And somewhere in the ether, Cobain screams at them to just let him go. So, my point? They'll want their money back if you're alive at thirty-three. Because if you don't die young, you aren't a Christ figure any longer. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.