Thanks a lot Stars...I'm going to get you for this.
This is my interpretation of Achtung Baby, as I hear the story in the songs. Obviously some people will disagree, but I offer it up in case anyone is interested.
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I’ve always believed that U2 songs can be interpreted at least twice. It is part of Bono’s genius as a lyricist that he is able to do this.
So first we have the literal interpretation – therefore, Spanish Eyes is only about Ali, and Shadows and Tall Trees is really only about Bono walking home through Dublin.
But I also believe there is a greater interpretation. One that fits into a larger theme. This is especially true of the songs on Achtung Baby. This is the story as I see it – and it does not have a happy ending.
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The story begins with Zoo Station. Our protagonist is feeling on top of the world. He’s ready for everything, as he tells us repeatedly. But he’s not quite content. He is aware that there is more out there, things he should have/could have. To him the world is a ride and he’s starting to think he wants off. He is ready to settle down.
In Even Better Than the Real Thing, our hero is still seduced by the surface glitter of things, and more importantly, his own life. He “slides down the surface of things.” Yet he’s becoming more and more aware that not all is right. His relationship with the person who matters most in his life is falling apart. She is not making him happy, but miserable. As much as he tries, “give me one last chance”, it is just not working out.
By the time of One, he knows that things are dangerously close to the brink. The happy relationship he once had is all but gone. They fight all the time and try to hurt each other. Neither one of them is happy. Something has to give.
Compelled by this unhappiness, the hero looks outside himself. He longs for something to hold onto, now that his relationship is disintegrating. He yearns for something to believe in, and the faith to hold onto it. Until the End of the World and Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses show him reaching out, but finding nothing in return. Betrayal awaits those who love too much, and inevitably he will end up alone. The woman he loved before only hurts him now. Although part of him hates her, without her, he is lost.
So Cruel is our hero at his most bitter. He feels betrayed, abandoned. Alone. He has nothing. He believes in nothing. He has reached rock bottom. “We’re cut adrift/we’re still floating.” He cannot stay where he is, but he does not know where else he can go.
Desperate, he flails out. He leaves his home and his woman and deliberately he seeks out life. He wants to know what he has been missing. He wants to find the things he needs so badly. He wants to belong. He wants to find God. He wants to love and be loved. The Fly and Mysterious Ways are his attempts to find these things. “You’ve been running away/from what you don’t understand.” Like those who seek solace in drugs and living in the gutter, the hero digs through the trash heaps of the world, searching for the elusive things he will never have.
His search is doomed. In Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World, our weary hero returns home, exhausted, spent. He has nothing left to give. His woman is still there, however and he runs to her, knowing she can make him feel better, even if only for a while.
But his time away cannot heal the wounds in their relationship. Ultraviolet shows him thinking back on what they once had. Doubt consumes him. “I remember when we could sleep on stones/Now we lie together in whispers and moans.” He wonders if they will ever regain those days, and the first happiness they shared. He turns to his woman to make him feel better, because she is all he has left.
But he wonders about her, and what will become of them. In Acrobat we hear, “When I first met you girl/you had fire in your soul/what happened (to) your face of melting snow?” He questions his own place in life, where he belongs. He does not even know if he believes in God. “And I’d break bread and wine/if there was a church I could receive in.”
By Love is Blindness, our hero has surrendered. He has given in. Life has beaten him down. He accepts his lot in life. He chooses to stay where he is, in his unhappy relationship, because that is all he has. He willingly chooses blindness, rather than gazing out at the world that has passed him by. “Love is blindness/I don’t want to see/Won’t you wrap the night/around me.”
Fade out to black.
