U2 And Their New Album (Part 3)

Continued from two posts ago

Why is it that U2 so frequently fall short of their potential? It’s because they have a limited ability as songwriters. They can rarely come up with memorable hooks, and therefore they often settle for mediocre or unfinished sounding ones. Rock music doesn’t have to have great lyrics, and so the fact that Bono’s not a great lyricist is not a fatal flaw. He can occasionally rise to the occasion, but what’s more important is that he can write lyrics that fit in with the music behind him. “With or Without You” is a great song, and a testament to that is the fact that it has mediocre lyrics, but who cares. Sometimes you find a song that just feels good and you give yourself away. Bono’s lyrics remind me a little bit of Oasis’ lyrics, in that most of the time their job is to just go with the flow and fit the mood. (The difference is you can actually hear Noel Gallagher not giving a shit in the crap he writes. I mean that in the best possible sense though, Oasis used to be a great fucking rock and roll band, and when they said they were they had the coke lines to back it up).

A lot of lyricists are like this. Their job is, more or less, simply not to get in the way of the mood and the feeling. Bono is usually this kind of lyricist. He’s got no “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” type lines, to stick in your gut until judgment day. Instead his job is “just don’t stumble”, because the message is already written in the chords and the guitar. But sometimes he does stumble, like in the God awful lyrics to “Grace” and “New York” off my favorite U2 album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”. I’m thinking of him like a boxer, or like Bob Dylan described him in his book “Chronicles Vol. 1”, a guy who was fated to be an Irish cop but beat the odds and became a rock star. (I’m paraphrasing Dylan) He’s a working class guy with kindness in his heart, trying to stay on his feet no matter how hard the punches come or how unevenly he’s matched. And when he’s up against music that’s calling out from the depths of our home sometimes the best you can aim for is to last the full fifteen rounds. Unevenly matched, out of his weight class, he wins by staying on his fucking feet. And on a good night, with an Irish glint and a smile that tells that he’s been to God’s furnace and come back with the fire, he can dash off a right hook that can take you by surprise. This is “I’m only hanging on to watch you go down, my love” in “So Cruel”, “Well it’s too late, tonight, to drag the past out in to the light” in “One” and “If I crawl, if I come crawling home, will you be there?” in “In a Little While”. There are others too, and also “Pride (In the name of Love)”, which is the only Martin Luther King tribute that is actually worthy of the man. (“In a Little While” is my favorite U2 song. Joey Ramone was supposedly listening to it as he died next to his mother in his hospital room. That’s probably the most beautiful and sad summation of what U2’s music, at their best, sounds like.)

Despite the brilliant exceptions, the rule for U2 is that if the music’s not good then the lyrics sure aren’t going to carry you through. And here’s their Achilles heel, and a conclusion barely worth writing. So I’m barely going to write it. They write unfocused hooks. All of us are in the gutter, U2 are looking at the stars. And give us a good hook and let us see them too. Or we’re in the gutter, and we’re also bored.
Tomorrow I’ll review their new album.

Continued next post.