redemption of The Fly

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iota

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I am starting to understand HTDAAB as The Repentance and Redemption of The Fly.

The last album was admittedly merely a collection of songs. This is a U2 ALBUM and it seems to pick up where the last trilogy left off. Vertigo is The Fly coming to grips with his depravity. I always sensed a connection between the feeling of vertigo and the Biblical Fall of Mankind (where by eating of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve "became like God" but rose up to such a height that in their mortal frame they couldn't handle, and fell spiritually.) The fact that The Fly sees Jesus around the neck of a prostitute is significant and points to the fact that even in the darkest hour, even briefly, light can be glimpsed, superficial as it may be. But in that Jesus around the harlot's neck, the main character begins to yearn for the home he left so long ago.

The rest of the album deals with mortality, death and the sense that one must become a child again in order to see God. The Miracle Drug is salvation, and the condition of the man in the wheelchair is the spiritual condition of all men. The man who Bono wrote this songs about is a metaphor for all of us. Haunted by beauty but unable to fully reflect it in our broken state.

Sometimes You Can't Make it is a realization at someone's deathbed that we leave this place alone and whatever we face after life we face alone, which is a terrifying thought. Yet we can take comfort in the fact that we are here together, and don't have to go it alone here.

Love and Peace shows that even though we are all here together, we don't naturally wish each other well, in fact we show our fallenness in how nation relates to nation (and the fact that there ARE nations pointing nukes at each other perpetually)..in this song we are all told to lay down what we cling to, in order to correct this wrong.

City of Blinding Lights is about trying to regain one's innocence. The City has always represented seduction to Bono's character, but this song is about remembering that initial loss of innocence, and Bono makes references to the boy inside the man and the girl he loves as being an innocent love. He revisits the city of Nighttown only to find that in this new state of mind as he comes closer to redemption, the city is actually teeming with light. "kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight" is a phrase that comes to mind. He revisits his darkness and finds it to be a place of light, love and beauty, only he just now realizes it.

All Because of you....The Fly comes home. It is a rebirth. It is the Born Again experience. Re-entering the womb is the imagery as Jesus describes it in John 3. And the fact that I AM (the sacred name of God we translate from Yahweh) comes into play shows that the burning bush has ignited in this character's heart and he is forever renewed. The music itself SOUNDS like a burning bush. And the fact that when Moses heard a voice from the burning bush that identified itself as "I Am That I Am" (or YHWH 'yahweh') is noteworthy.

A Man and A Woman could be this character which has struggled with thoughts of infidelity both spiritually and physically overcome with a desire to be true to his pure love and in doing so becomes true to his God that he feels has left him. He calls his love "little sister" because he realizes that they have their humanity in common and are related in that sense.

Crumbs is the backlash against the religious system that has screwed him up in the first place. Bono's character (or Bono himself most likely) distances himself from the religious mainstream while not distancing himself from the love and compassion of Jesus, whom these people claim to follow.

One step closer is the eerie hymn to the uncertainty of death and what comes next. All religious experience stems from what this song so hauntingly expresses.

Original of the Species is CRUCIAL. Yes, it is a song written to one of Edge's daughters but it is written to each of us as well. Remain a child in your heart. As when Jesus told His disciple that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, one must become like a child, otherwise it's impossible. This is the exortation of this song.

And Yahweh. Needs little explaination. The prayer of the scoundrel for God's forgiveness, regeneration and love. It is significant that it is to Yahweh and not just "God." It is to the God of the Bible, not the God of modern spirituality. They didn't have to write it to Yahweh, they could have just used the word "God" but the fact that they didn't speaks volumes.
 
Unfortunately, you are crazy if you can see The Fly on this record...

I miss the days when U2 was inventive, bold and smartass...:sad:
 
Hey iota, I enjoyed your analasys very much! Excellent stuff!
 
U2_Guy said:
Unfortunately, you are crazy if you can see The Fly on this record...

I miss the days when U2 was inventive, bold and smartass...:sad:

did you actually read his post or just the title before you replied?
 
U2_Guy said:
Unfortunately, you are crazy if you can see The Fly on this record...

I miss the days when U2 was inventive, bold and smartass...:sad:

Yes the fly has been home since POP. Where has the original poster been?

He embraces the sun again. Like Bono said it starts as a dance album and turns on all of that. Achtung Baby was him leaving home. Zooropa was wandering in the desert and POP was him realizing in the middle of a discotheque that he'd rather be staring at the sun.

ATYCLB goes even further in that direction with Elevation and Beautiful Day. It's like POP was The Fly coming home and ATYCLB is The Fly sitting around his father's house.

HTDAAB is just The Fly growing up and getting boring. Hopefully like Ullysses his wanderlust will call him out again.
 
LiveFire said:


Yes the fly has been home since POP. Where has the original poster been?

He embraces the sun again. Like Bono said it starts as a dance album and turns on all of that. Achtung Baby was him leaving home. Zooropa was wandering in the desert and POP was him realizing in the middle of a discotheque that he'd rather be staring at the sun.

ATYCLB goes even further in that direction with Elevation and Beautiful Day. It's like POP was The Fly coming home and ATYCLB is The Fly sitting around his father's house.

HTDAAB is just The Fly growing up and getting boring. Hopefully like Ullysses his wanderlust will call him out again.

The last song on Pop was a mournful dirge. Does that sound like home?

Wake Up Dead Man was a prayer, but a sad lonely prayer. It wasn't the joyful homecoming All Because of You is. Pop ends with the Fly realizing that what he first thought was deep is actually shallow, and he realizes that there is a God-shaped hole he is trying to fill, and there is a hail mary prayer thrown out in desparation, but no answer, other than the universe's.

ATYCLB wasn't really related to the previous three albums, it was just a collection of songs without a story. Bono said on this album, they wanted to create something where all songs are important and fit into the whole in a cohesive way. In short, it must have a main theme. ATYCLB didn't take place in a house, but at an airport. ATYCLB was a crossroads. The title suggests departure, not arrival. HTDAAB is an arrival.

I'm sorry, but Vertigo is related to The Fly in the sense that you've got another phone call from hell, only the character isn't enjoying it anymore. Whereas Discotheque was The Fly saying "this is really getting superficial *wink wink*" Vertigo is the Fly slamming down his last shot of sad and saying "I'm going home." This album is Achtung Baby in REVERSE. It begins with a conception and ENDS with a birth.

And the atomic bomb is the self-destructive nature the Fly can't escape. BOOM cha.
 
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U2girl said:
The Fly got home with ATYCLB.

*shrug* Just my interpretation. Didn't personally see the last album as anything worthy of the Fly. Or if it was, it was just the Fly hanging around the airport trying to figure out what to leave and what to take. That was the Fly in the beautiful day video, right?
 
The more I think of it, the more this story might fit into a Dante's Divine Comedy Paradigm. From the inferno (AB, Zooropa) to purgatorio (Pop, ATYCLB) and now Paradisio (HTDAAB...???).

Come on, it's not any sillier than anyone else's take.
 
iota, I love your theory. I don't know if I agree yet, I want to let the album sink in more (I do feel it is the rightful thematic successor to Zooropa, though), but your theory is very well organised and makes sense.
 
Sleep Over Jack said:
Its funny how a thread about lyrics got hi-jacked by bashers once more..

No it was just a flawed premise. Zooropa was full out in the desert while POP was coming home and yearning for home. Dismissing ATYCLB as simply a bunch of songs is not a genuine arguement at all. The songs have more structure to them but that doesn't say that it's still not telling a story. The Fly puts down the shades and just goes for the love and happiness and the only thing he can't leave behind is love. I mean it's a concept that only really works on AB and Zoo and after that it's just the style of the band. HTDAAB makes no coherent mention of The Fly and there are really no characters. I find the OP's relatings of the songs to the character of the fly a bit of a stretch.

The Fly is Bono and U2 and it's clear that in POP they are back from the danger zone and the rock and roll party zone and are coming more into the experienced saint mode as opposed to the naive saint mode that was pre-Achtung Baby. Wake Up Dead Man is a song about doubt but that doesn't prove the the album isn't meant as a return to their more genuine form.

I mean examine sexual songs like Wild Honey and then Mysterious Ways from AB and ATYCLB and it's pretty clear the transition that's been made. It's not about steamy sexiness anymore it's about a sweeter love without all the leather and hip wiggling.

Walk On you know it's you've got to leave it behind and walk on and leave those worldly trappings behind whereas Zooropa is all about walking into the laughing gas and the distortion.

Elevation is a joyful prayer whereas the spirtuality on AB is "I need the cup to fill it up to drink it slow can't let you go." He's only barely hanging onto his soul whereas with elevate he's basically barely hanging onto his skin and bones.

It's U2's thematic evolution we're talking about and clearly they've done a 180 from AB by the time of ATYCLB which started at POP. HTDAAB is as coherent thematically as ATYCLB. You can't bring up radical thematic contradictions within ATYCLB. It's not like on one song they're in full blown prodigal son mode and in another they're in glory to the father mode. They're pretty much in glory to the father mode the entire album.

My feelings on HTDAAB aside the premise that this and not POP/ATYCLB being the conclussion of the AB Zooropa trilogy is just plain wrong.

HTDAAB is in the same place as ATYCLB thematically.
 
The fact remains that Pop was unfinished and ATYCLB was merely a collection of songs focused around the "at the crossroads" motif. This is the first properly cohesive U2 album since Zooropa. The character is conjured up in Vertigo and the rest of the album "brings him home" in a much more satifying way than either of the previous two were able.
 
Palace_Hero said:
Some people read way too much into stuff.

And others don't read much at all.

Come on, U2 began a story at Achtung and my only point is that they're still telling it. This is an album with some actual depth finally. It's only fitting to try and decode what's taking place. In a Q interview right before Pop came out, Larry admitted that there was really nothing holding the songs together. I remember feeling quite let down, but just took Pop for what it was, unconnected songs thrown together for the sake of supporting a tour. ATYCLB also only has the departure, airport, crossroads motif. These are symbols that the band chooses to represent the album.

This is the first album since zooTV in which Bono has said that every song is crucial to the whole, meaning there is something bigger being said than just the individual songs. There is a logical progression from Vertigo to Yahweh. By The Fly, I'm referring to Bono's prodigal alter-ego. And he actually goes somewhere significant through the course of this album.
 
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Dismissing ATYCLB as simply a bunch of songs is not a genuine arguement at all. The songs have more structure to them but that doesn't say that it's still not telling a story.

OK, I stoped reading after that, you clearly were not listening to the band and you're trying to make ATYCanLB better than it realy is.
U2 said that there is no theme on ATYCanLB, there's no story-telling, NOTHING; that it is just a collection of songs, that there are 11 singles (!!!LOL!!!) on the record and that now they're going to compete with Britney on pop-charts (or something like that).
HTDAAB has a theme...
source of info - U2 in various inteviews.

I agree with iota here, ATYCanLB isn't worth metioning... but if you realy want to make The Fly out of ATYCanLB:
It's The Fly lying in hospital bed with amnesia, having no idea what kind of shit the band did without him on ATYCanLB! :wink:
 
What is the deal with all of the ATYCLB bashing around here lately. In my opinion, it was their best album since The Joshua Tree, and for all the joy we have over HTDAAB after waiting so long for it, its ATYCLB part 2. And by the way, if U2 released another mess like POP back in 2000, chances are most of us, and maybe even them, would have walked away and wouldn't have been waiting on the edge of our seats for Bomb.

By the way, I realize this might not fit into this thread, and maybe I should make my point somewhere else, but the ATYCLB bashing is just FREAKIN ME OUT!
 
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