Stay (Faraway, So Close!)

The meaning of "Stay!" became clear to me a long time ago when someone I loved was going through a very similar situation of the woman depicted in the lyric. Although I understood that the narrative is meant to be her guardian angel, I felt as if I had played that part before.

The person I loved was abused and degraded continually by someone she claimed to love. And though I did every thing I could to help her see her way out of destructive habits and abusive relationships, it was as if she couldn't hear me, like she wouldn't accept my help. Almost like I wasn't even there, so all I could do was watch helplessly as she virtually destroyed herself.

So anyway, this song has always been very personal to me and very close to my heart. Because I feel like I've lived it, I can relate to the loneliness and sadness and helplessness the woman's angel must be feeling, unable to do anything but watch her destroy herself, knowing she won't listen to reason; knowing she's too far gone.

It's a sad, beautiful song. I have only seen clips from the video, but it looks gorgeous. This is an amazing song that just about anyone can empathize with and appreciate on an entirely human level.

Have you ever loved someone that you can't touch for some reason?

Perhaps because it would be wrong, perhaps because it would be bad, but most surely because it just can't be... someone that for some reason is far away yet so close... always around, always coming back, no escape from hering their name or their voice or their deeds. So close that you know their smell, so close that you can read their riddles... so close that you can see when tears form in their eyes or the short blink before each smile... and yet they see through you, they don't hear you and they just live their lives and you're just not a part of the story..

... and so it goes.. we're humans all right, we get tired, we get sad but you try to live you own life... close your eyes and convince yourself that it will be one day gone away, but you degrade yourself in suffering and cry while nobody is looking, wrecked but still rolling, wake up in palaces that feel like caves, wander around and nothing nothing calms the pain, switch the channels on the tele until you go back to 1 and then repeat it until you turn it off.

well.. the song is about some angels movie I guess... all of you guys can't be wrong.

such a good song, definitely one of U2's best. haunting lyrics, beautiful guitar, and, like with or without you, the song builds to a climax which reaches its peak when bono sings "stay" for the last time...

this song has, for me, always been about a man who is deeply in love with a woman who's in an abusive relationship with another man. the angel who hits the ground at the song's conclusion is the woman who has fallen, not necessarily dead, but she has once again been thrown to the ground by her abusive lover and must pick herself up again.

"And if you look, you look through me And when you talk, you talk at me And when I touch you, you don't feel a thing"

here the man says that the woman he is desperately in love with doesn't know he's alive. no matter how much he tries to talk to her, she doesn't notice. (faraway, so close...)

i have seen the filmclip aswell, and though i understand the song was written with the story of guardian angels in mind, when i hear the song its never about angels. to me, bono's voice has never been heavenly, but so genuinely human, so soulful, so comforting, and you know that he means every word he sings. the sound of the soul has been tragically neglected in a large majority of today'#######, yet in U2, it lives on...

A rather depressing song about a woman in an abusive relationship who the song's character befriends. This seems to be a secret friendship to make sure the woman's boyfriend doesn't find out and at first the woman finds release with her new friend. I also think our character and the woman love each other but they don't consummate their feelings because our character will only do what the woman feels comfortable with.

However as time passes on, the woman, who wants something better, feels she is unable to leave her abusive boyfriend. Thus explaining the character's observations about how withdrawn and outwardly desensitized this woman is becoming. He knows something is very wrong and he would do anything to save her but ultimately knows only the woman can save herself.

Finally the woman can't go on living any longer, torn between her attachment to the character and sticking it out with her abusive boyfriend, she decides to kill herself.

It's unclear in the last few lines whether the character is with the woman or if is she is on her own. But that 'angel' reference is how our character sees the woman; someone with a nice personality who deserves so much better. Finally the 'just a bang and a clatter' refers to how she killed herself; she pulls the gun to her head, pulls the trigger and afterwards she falls while the gun falls to the ground with a clatter.

"just the bang.. and the clatter.. as an angel hits the ground."

i love this part.

i think this is about a woman living on the streets. it shows 3 snips of her life and death. and the ending makes the point. its about being low, in the gutter, but not being able to escpae from the world around you.

I've been pondering the meaning of this song ever since I bought a copy of Zooropa back in 1995. I think it's about a guy that likes a girl who is unsure about herself and gets involved in alot of bad stuff/abusive relationships. But she doesn't even notice the guy who likes her, but he's sortof like her guardian angel. Which is why I also think the music video for this song has a lot of angels in it (does anyone else think the video strikes a resemblence to the movie 'City of Angels'?...only it came out like 4 years before the movie...U2 is amaaaazing)

Yet another phenomenal song by U2.

It's one of their songs that are so beautifully vague, it could really be about anything that has meaning to you. Other examples are With or Without You or Where the Streets Have No Name. They're so deep, and poetic. God, Bono's a genius!

The song written from the perspective of someone in the spirit world (either a guardian angel or departed loved one) and says how they can watch and feel everything the living person does, but cannot help them.

I guess the song is about a girl in an abusive relationship with a guy who just don't loves and don't deserves her, and at the same time, of a nice guy who is singing the song and want to take her out of that sittuation, but as always, nice guys just get "friendzoned" (pardon the term) and not loved ("see's through me; don't feel a thing"), but he asks for her love and tries to convince her that he could make that night better, and her life better... But he don't succed on that and she becames so sad that she suicides (or pehaps the abusive guy kills her).

Taking a more abstract point of view, it shows how we are a fucked up romantic human beings, who always fall in love for people who don't care about us, and as so we don't see who is close (far away so close) and really apreciates us and in the sort of the same situation (a vampire or a victim...). A vicious cycle of platonic love i guess...