If he were a painter, I'd say in the 80's he was an impressionist and more recently he's a realist. It's all a matter of opinion, of course, but even a line that's can at first glance be written off as gibberish like "True colours fly in blue and black, blue silken sky and burning flag" is a lot more moving, to me, than awkward musings about Chinese stocks. The relative vagueness of his lyrics back then, on songs like TUF and ASOH and even on song like Streets, allowed the listener to go anywhere they wanted with it. But there's only so much you can do with forced verse that makes up the worst of Bomb, NLOTH and SOI (though the latter definitely represented an uptick in the lyrics....perhaps because of The Edge?).
i dunno ... i agree that Bomb is something of a low point, but i think "love and faith and sex and fear / and all the things that keep us here" says a whole lot more about the human condition than "silken sky and burning flag," or anything else on TUF. yes, you can take vague lyrics and make them meaningful, and "streets" is perhaps the best example of that, every time i see them live that song means something different, and equally profound, to me. but i am interested in what Bono has to actually say and think about things. i also find "breathe" one of the more interesting songs, lyrically, on NLOTH, and i know i'm in the minority here, but there's a lot of playful, interesting lyrical ideas that bounce around like a rubber ball in a squash court going on in SUC (though the music is horrid) -- there's some vivid stuff in there:
"The wire is stretched in between our two towers / Stand up in this dizzy world / Where a lovesick eye can steal the view."
It recalls 9/11 and the gaping hole in lower Manhattan, views terrorism as a sick form of love, and references the documentary "Man on Wire" where a man walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers, thusly suggesting that opposing points of view -- the West and Islam, perhaps -- can be crossed, like the space between the Twin Towers, if we have the courage to try. the wire is already there, we just have to stand up -- as if on a tightrope, it is a tightrope -- and defy the vertigo, and cross.
there's actually a lot to unpack there, and all that in 3 lines.
what i think happens is that people look at the flowery 80s lyrics and think there's more meaning than there actually is, and they look at the more concrete 00s lyrics and think there's less meaning than there actually is. that's my opinion. people get bogged down in "mole / hole / soul" in elevation, but what the song is actually about is orgasm as epiphany, witnessing the divine via flesh. it's totally a sex song about the cosmic unity -- physical and mental -- that can be achieved via intercourse.
it's cool stuff.
again, as always, taste is individual. i appreciate how beautiful the tumble of words in EPAA can be to some, and that's fine. i just think the 00s gets undersold in here, so i'm taking a moment to stand up for the qualities i find most compelling about 21st century Bono.
Bono had a lot to say during that period. Even though the lyrics require a bit more from the listener, there is still a there there.
