Love Is All We Have Left - Appreciation Thread

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Love this as an intro for the album. I wish they'd have carried it on and built it into a longer song
 
Actually Love Is All would go better into the string version of Lights Of Home which I prefer.
 
It took a few pass-throughs for this to sink in, but instead of a song that begun as one I wanted to skip over to get to the 'meat', it's now one of the most intriguing tracks on the album for me. It's a cinematic opener, and it conjured the following imagery for me:

If SOE is largely based on Bono's 'brush with mortality', and his reactions to it, then Love Is All We Have Left is the sound of a near-death experience.

It's become, to my ears, a song that could be set to an image of Bono lying on a hospital bed, having a near-death experience, where his spirit is hovering over his body, drifting away. The duet he sets up with vocoder-Bono could easily be the watery tug between the real and spiritual world, as he's tempted to let go and drift away, and it would be all ok - the 'best day ever'.

The other end of the telescope, the stars, a baby crying seeming to signify some sort of reincarnation - one soul in, one soul out.

It can also mirror the band's continued existence. Would hanging it up be all that bad? There are so many other bands out there, so many 'ways of seeing', U2 can just drift off into history. Or do all those ways of seeing provide some inspiration, some motivation? Is that why there's 'Bono-iverism' here?

It also speaks to a realization that, when everything's stripped away, maybe that feeling of love - of life, family, music - is all a man, or a band, needs to continue.

It's almost an unapologetic answer to any critic that complains that U2's music is too U2, too big, too cheesy, that the themes are all cliché. Of course it is!

If Love's all that's left, it's a good starting point.

And with that realization, his soul slams back down into his body, and we go right to Lights of Home, with it's "I should be dead" and "what the hell, what the hell you got for me".

That's the context where LOH make sense to me, sequentially, if it forms the second part of the story of this album. The letter-writing comes after with the singles.
 
Montrose said:
And with that realization, his soul slams back down into his body, and we go right to Lights of Home, with it's "I should be dead" and "what the hell, what the hell you got for me".

That's the context where LOH make sense to me, sequentially, if it forms the second part of the story of this album. The letter-writing comes after with the singles.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking, too, that this song is from the perspective of a person who has died. The part about "looking through the other end of the telescope" sounds like a spirit looking down at someone who is looking up at the stars.
 
Montrose said:
It took a few pass-throughs for this to sink in, but instead of a song that begun as one I wanted to skip over to get to the 'meat', it's now one of the most intriguing tracks on the album for me. It's a cinematic opener, and it conjured the following imagery for me:

If SOE is largely based on Bono's 'brush with mortality', and his reactions to it, then Love Is All We Have Left is the sound of a near-death experience.

It's become, to my ears, a song that could be set to an image of Bono lying on a hospital bed, having a near-death experience, where his spirit is hovering over his body, drifting away. The duet he sets up with vocoder-Bono could easily be the watery tug between the real and spiritual world, as he's tempted to let go and drift away, and it would be all ok - the 'best day ever'.

The other end of the telescope, the stars, a baby crying seeming to signify some sort of reincarnation - one soul in, one soul out.

It can also mirror the band's continued existence. Would hanging it up be all that bad? There are so many other bands out there, so many 'ways of seeing', U2 can just drift off into history. Or do all those ways of seeing provide some inspiration, some motivation? Is that why there's 'Bono-iverism' here?

It also speaks to a realization that, when everything's stripped away, maybe that feeling of love - of life, family, music - is all a man, or a band, needs to continue.

It's almost an unapologetic answer to any critic that complains that U2's music is too U2, too big, too cheesy, that the themes are all cliché. Of course it is!

If Love's all that's left, it's a good starting point.

And with that realization, his soul slams back down into his body, and we go right to Lights of Home, with it's "I should be dead" and "what the hell, what the hell you got for me".

That's the context where LOH make sense to me, sequentially, if it forms the second part of the story of this album. The letter-writing comes after with the singles.
Click to expand...
Yes! This is exactly it, and exactly why it works.
 
gvox said:
Well there just so happens to be 7 billion stars on our planet, so....


(And do we even know how many up there?)
Click to expand...

100-200 billion in the Milky way, something like 1-with-24-zeroes stars in the observable universe.
 
There are 7 billion people on the planet. So the spirit on the other side is looking down from heaven, commenting on how each person is different, with their own thoughts and perspectives (so many stars, so many ways of seeing), and then concludes that in this time of strife this is no time for me to be up here in heaven, I need to get back down to earth and make a difference (hey, this is no time not to be alive). Then the jarring return to his body and in comes Lights of Home. This makes sense given that the synth voice is supposed to be the spirit, its his perspective looking back down on earth.
 
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Montrose said:
It took a few pass-throughs for this to sink in, but instead of a song that begun as one I wanted to skip over to get to the 'meat', it's now one of the most intriguing tracks on the album for me. It's a cinematic opener, and it conjured the following imagery for me:

If SOE is largely based on Bono's 'brush with mortality', and his reactions to it, then Love Is All We Have Left is the sound of a near-death experience.

It's become, to my ears, a song that could be set to an image of Bono lying on a hospital bed, having a near-death experience, where his spirit is hovering over his body, drifting away. The duet he sets up with vocoder-Bono could easily be the watery tug between the real and spiritual world, as he's tempted to let go and drift away, and it would be all ok - the 'best day ever'.

The other end of the telescope, the stars, a baby crying seeming to signify some sort of reincarnation - one soul in, one soul out.

It can also mirror the band's continued existence. Would hanging it up be all that bad? There are so many other bands out there, so many 'ways of seeing', U2 can just drift off into history. Or do all those ways of seeing provide some inspiration, some motivation? Is that why there's 'Bono-iverism' here?

It also speaks to a realization that, when everything's stripped away, maybe that feeling of love - of life, family, music - is all a man, or a band, needs to continue.

It's almost an unapologetic answer to any critic that complains that U2's music is too U2, too big, too cheesy, that the themes are all cliché. Of course it is!

If Love's all that's left, it's a good starting point.

And with that realization, his soul slams back down into his body, and we go right to Lights of Home, with it's "I should be dead" and "what the hell, what the hell you got for me".

That's the context where LOH make sense to me, sequentially, if it forms the second part of the story of this album. The letter-writing comes after with the singles.
Click to expand...
Great post.
 
wow. I'm liking the interpretations here.

Especially liking the laying in the hospital bed - life slipping - looking from above, reasoning/arguing to stay from below... (I wanted the world - but you knew better... You argue because you can't accept, love is all we have left...) Ties into an earlier comment about the heart in the suitcase, and bono saying that love is the only thing you can take with you when you die.

The 7 billion stars is awesome, and never connected the dots on that one to looking down at the 7 billion people on earth. Seems obvious now. :reject:

Anyway, I just love this song, from the get go in my top 3 from the album. And it just got better reading this thread.
 
thefly418 said:
There are 7 billion people on the planet. So the spirit on the other side is looking down from heaven, commenting on how each person is different, with their own thoughts and perspectives (so many stars, so many ways of seeing), and then concludes that in this time of strife this is no time for me to be up here in heaven, I need to get back down to earth and make a difference (hey, this is no time not to be alive). Then the jarring return to his body and in comes Lights of Home. This makes sense given that the synth voice is supposed to be the spirit, its his perspective looking back down on earth.
Click to expand...

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. :up:

When they played Iris on the IE Tour, they used star imagery on the screens, and that song says “something in your eyes took a thousand years to get here,” like the light from a star. And there’s another reference to eyes, along with “seven billion stars in your (or is it her?) eyes,” and “in your eyes I see it.” Whose eyes is he talking about? I don’t know where I’m going with this, but there seem to be some unifying themes concerning death/souls spanning both SOI and SOE. I’m really curious about all this stuff and hope Bono talks more about it someday.
 
Rachel D. said:
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. :up:

When they played Iris on the IE Tour, they used star imagery on the screens, and that song says “something in your eyes took a thousand years to get here,” like the light from a star. And there’s another reference to eyes, along with “seven billion stars in your (or is it her?) eyes,” and “in your eyes I see it.” Whose eyes is he talking about? I don’t know where I’m going with this, but there seem to be some unifying themes concerning death/souls spanning both SOI and SOE. I’m really curious about all this stuff and hope Bono talks more about it someday.
Click to expand...
Isn't it cool that we're discussing Bono's cryptic and esoteric lyrics again - he can still pull it off when he wants to!
 
Rachel D. said:
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. :up:

When they played Iris on the IE Tour, they used star imagery on the screens, and that song says “something in your eyes took a thousand years to get here,” like the light from a star. And there’s another reference to eyes, along with “seven billion stars in your (or is it her?) eyes,” and “in your eyes I see it.” Whose eyes is he talking about? I don’t know where I’m going with this, but there seem to be some unifying themes concerning death/souls spanning both SOI and SOE. I’m really curious about all this stuff and hope Bono talks more about it someday.
Click to expand...

Iris starts with "The star that gave us light has been gone a while.." and later says, "something in your eyes took a thousand years to get here".

We assume the 'star' is his mother, and light from stars takes forever to get to earth. Many stars we see, we're actually seeing their past light, literally looking back in time. Some stars we see have already died out, we just haven't received the light from their supernova just yet. There are plenty of new stars that have been born, but their light hasn't reached earth yet, so we don't see them.

I thought it was also a reference to the time frame - Iris died around 40 years ago, and Bono always said he blocked out his memories of her. I took Iris as an account of those memories coming back - the 'light' - and it seemed to take forever.

This mirrors Lemon, which talks about the color of his mother's dress in an old video he found of her. That was light too: ".. through the light projected.. he turns his money into light to look for her..".

In Love Is, he brings back the eyes as well, as you say. 'Something in your eyes' crosses over to '7 billion stars in her eyes'. Maybe Bono, looking down at Earth and all the 'local' stars - the human lights at home - is also talking about his mother looking down at the same time.

I kind of took it as the telescope working both ways -you look down, you see the lights on earth, looking up, the stars of the heavens. And Bono was at the verge of crossing over to meet his mother up there to join the other set.

There's the first Vocoder lyric too - "Don't close your eyes" to start with, and then the decision, "This is no time not to be alive".

I think for all the overt simplicity and directness and cliché the critics saddle Bono's lyrics with, there's always an extra layer or two, especially if you're a fan and have been paying attention.
 
standrums said:
Great post.
Click to expand...

OK, this is the first interpretation I've heard that I think NAILED it! And then I saw this one that is similar but not as good as yours:

https://genius.com/13263488

Totally gives a whole new meaning to why they used the vocoder or whatever it's called. That's Bono almost or temporarily on the "other side."

The "you argue cuz you can't accept," is the other side of Ali (the one who believes in immortality earlier in the song) saying, don't go yet, you're going to be alright, you're going to get through this.

I dare you to listen to this now and not get the chills.

And then, going into Lights of Home right after this makes perfect sense. Some have complained about it being jarring, but it's probably jarring going from almost being dead to scratching your way back.

THIS is why I love this band. If your interpretation is correct, what other band out there would have put this kind of nuanced thought into their songs and lyrics. A lot of the reviewers say the lyrics are trite, but when put in this perspective it all makes sense, and I don't see them as trite, just heartfelt.

Love is All is the almost goodbye, but I gotta come back...13 is the goodbye in case I don't come back next time. Absolutely beautiful. Perfect bookends to one another.

But all of this scares me for Bono and his health.
 
Montrose said:
Iris starts with "The star that gave us light has been gone a while.." and later says, "something in your eyes took a thousand years to get here".

We assume the 'star' is his mother, and light from stars takes forever to get to earth. Many stars we see, we're actually seeing their past light, literally looking back in time. Some stars we see have already died out, we just haven't received the light from their supernova just yet. There are plenty of new stars that have been born, but their light hasn't reached earth yet, so we don't see them.

I thought it was also a reference to the time frame - Iris died around 40 years ago, and Bono always said he blocked out his memories of her. I took Iris as an account of those memories coming back - the 'light' - and it seemed to take forever.

This mirrors Lemon, which talks about the color of his mother's dress in an old video he found of her. That was light too: ".. through the light projected.. he turns his money into light to look for her..".

In Love Is, he brings back the eyes as well, as you say. 'Something in your eyes' crosses over to '7 billion stars in her eyes'. Maybe Bono, looking down at Earth and all the 'local' stars - the human lights at home - is also talking about his mother looking down at the same time.

I kind of took it as the telescope working both ways -you look down, you see the lights on earth, looking up, the stars of the heavens. And Bono was at the verge of crossing over to meet his mother up there to join the other set.

There's the first Vocoder lyric too - "Don't close your eyes" to start with, and then the decision, "This is no time not to be alive".

I think for all the overt simplicity and directness and cliché the critics saddle Bono's lyrics with, there's always an extra layer or two, especially if you're a fan and have been paying attention.
Click to expand...
:up:

Indeed.
 
Alphorn said:
OK, this is the first interpretation I've heard that I think NAILED it! And then I saw this one that is similar but not as good as yours:

https://genius.com/13263488

Totally gives a whole new meaning to why they used the vocoder or whatever it's called. That's Bono almost or temporarily on the "other side."

The "you argue cuz you can't accept," is the other side of Ali (the one who believes in immortality earlier in the song) saying, don't go yet, you're going to be alright, you're going to get through this.

I dare you to listen to this now and not get the chills.

And then, going into Lights of Home right after this makes perfect sense. Some have complained about it being jarring, but it's probably jarring going from almost being dead to scratching your way back.

THIS is why I love this band. If your interpretation is correct, what other band out there would have put this kind of nuanced thought into their songs and lyrics. A lot of the reviewers say the lyrics are trite, but when put in this perspective it all makes sense, and I don't see them as trite, just heartfelt.

Love is All is the almost goodbye, but I gotta come back...13 is the goodbye in case I don't come back next time. Absolutely beautiful. Perfect bookends to one another.

But all of this scares me for Bono and his health.
Click to expand...

I also hear the "You argue because you can't accept" line as a sort of in-band argument, as well as the other philosophical, post-mortem interpretation. The idea that, if the band's also reached the point Acrobat hinted at - 'no new ideas in the house, and every book has been read' - then why continue? Then it's a band/relevance issue as well as spiritual one. I can see the argument being between Bono and Larry if anything, SOE has the basis of letters to loved ones, so Love being all that's left made a pretty good base for the album, and if they don't have to chase relevence and be world-beaters any longer, then they can just record and play for the love of it. The lights of home could be the stage lights, then, and throws forward to The Blackout, where playing live is a theme - the lights go out, throw yourself about, in the darkness - the light you can really be.

Anyhow, I'm just rambling at this point. :)
 
The lyrics online say "immortality" but I think it fits better "in mortality". The song for me is a message of "live in the moment", appreciate all other perspectives, love each other, almost anti-religion. "in mortality" would cement that theory. But "immortality" disrupts it.
 
u2fancit said:
The lyrics online say "immortality" but I think it fits better "in mortality". The song for me is a message of "live in the moment", appreciate all other perspectives, love each other, almost anti-religion. "in mortality" would cement that theory. But "immortality" disrupts it.
Click to expand...
I've always heard immortality, and it seemed pretty obvious
 
This is the biggest grower for me..... Just plain beautiful, I'm not sure why but it kinda makes me think to Passengers-era.
 
So with the reveal of the AR thing, it looks like this is probably going to be the opening song of the show. And since this song seems to be about being dead, it makes sense that AR Bono looks like a ghost.
 
Rachel D. said:
So with the reveal of the AR thing, it looks like this is probably going to be the opening song of the show. And since this song seems to be about being dead, it makes sense that AR Bono looks like a ghost.
Click to expand...



I get the feeling it's going to be the "take the stage" song and be playing over the speakers. People will take out their phones and watch and then the lights will go out and....the real fun begins!
 
CosmoKramer said:
I get the feeling it's going to be the "take the stage" song and be playing over the speakers. People will take out their phones and watch and then the lights will go out and....the real fun begins!
Click to expand...
If I had to guess, Bono himself will actually song over the track as well. The second verse in particular has both Robo-Bono and regular Bono singing.

It may also be a gimmick to distract people while they sneak inside of the screen to start the show... or maybe just B in the screen.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
If I had to guess, Bono himself will actually song over the track as well. The second verse in particular has both Robo-Bono and regular Bono singing.

It may also be a gimmick to distract people while they sneak inside of the screen to start the show... or maybe just B in the screen.
Click to expand...



Saw them live last night and while we have all seen the clips on YouTube, you were in fact correct. It was actually a very odd thing the way they quasi "open" with this song and how they do it. The crowd was excited when they first saw Bono but then it was just vey subdued and anti-climatic because it's a very slow song an the band isn't in stage. U2 openers are typically explosive (Mofo, Elevation, COBL, Breathe and The Miracle) with the band taking the stage one by one and then performing with energy to kick things off. This however was slow and actually worked to drain the built up anticipation for the band taking the stage.

I get that thematically it might work but from an entertainment standpoint it fell flat. Also, the fucking lip syncing is just dumb...U2 is one of the greatest live bands ever and to open each show on this tour they have their lead singer lip sync to a song and the band be nowhere in sight? I put this up there on my list of post-McGuiness WTF moments.
 
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