Make Me Crawl, Talk at Me, Find a Decent Melody: From God to Despair in Three U2 Songs by lisa levy

How many bands can you name who have lasted 40 years without any major changes? Rush, a classic example of rock longevity and stability, called it quits when their drummer died; they have done the unfathomable and retired like accountants. The Rolling Stones are still grinding it out, but they don't meet the criteria: no pouting about songwriting credits; no replacement members; no exploiting Billy Preston, who played keyboards on every record and tour without an invitation to join the band.
One answer: U2.
It's a paradox, as U2 lack the allure of most successful bands. They are not:

A band you want to fuck (they don't bring the sexy).
Deep thinkers, despite their penchant for staring into the middle distance (they definitely bring the brooding).
Lighthearted. For U2, music is a vocation, not a vacation (they bring the profound, but how much profundity do you want with your music?).
Rock and roll fun.

Who are they? Four Irish kids from Dublin. In 1976, they were scrappy Irish teens who answered an ad placed by drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. He found bassist Adam Clayton, guitarist The Edge, and an ambitious frontman who called himself Bono Vox, which translates to good voice in Latin. He dropped "Vox," but Bono kept the first part of the name with the daring and arrogance of youth. U2 paid their dues in clubs and pubs, edging up to bigger venues, and eventually selling out stadiums. Bono sang with the passion of a lapsed Catholic and worked the stage like a Pentecostal preacher. The band had something, but no one expected them to stick or to stick around.
U2 has achieved a nearly impossible feat of tranquility and longevity. They have had no scandals or fallouts. No drugs or gossip or public interpersonal drama. No excessive partying, no addiction, no rehab. No one has left the band, and no one has joined. To maintain a band for a decade is significant: most truly influential bands cycle through fans every three albums (around ten years). U2 are still an active and intact band over 40 years since their debut, "Boy," came out in 1980.
Defiant, compassionate, and consistent, U2 embodied professionalism. They did not trash hotel rooms or date supermodels. They had a work ethic. As their star rose, they changed, but it was overwhelmingly positive. The haircuts improve. The sunglasses get more and more expensive. Their clothes get hipper and fit better, so the look of the band shifts from Irish kids in ratty jeans and t-shirts to men of the world in very expensive jeans and t-shirts. U2 shed their scrappiness and evolved into a cool and serious band, main characters in the history of late 20th and early 21st century music. They are James Dean, not Sal Mineo.
The sadness of U2 is not the longing expressed so delicately in Nick Drake's "Bryter Layter", the brutal stinging takedowns of Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks," or the loneliness and alienation of an Elliott Smith record. Those records are tender accounts of hurt and its handmaidens. U2 are closer to Jean-Paul Sartre than Joni Mitchell. There is a surprising depth to U2's depictions of suffering and sadness, which hinge on big picture ennui and despair instead of quotidian love and loss.
The 1990s were the period of U2's greatest sad songs. This three-song playlist encapsulates the existential despair that permeates U2's music. Starting with 1991's "One," a paean to God and abandonment; spend some time in 1993's "Stay (Faraway, So Close!), a pitiful and piercing vignette of an abused woman, a pack of cigarettes, and a possible angel; and finish with a song about the paralysis of depression, "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" (2000).

1. "One" (Achtung Baby, 1991)

To begin our descent into the free-floating angst U2 are so good at creating and expressing, we'll start with "Achtung Baby," U2's Kid A (for the record, I like it better than Kid A). "One" reflects the Catholicism deep in their Dublin veins, a presence in many U2 songs, which discuss both God's goodness and his jones for vengeance. "One" is a monologue to the lovelorn, but this is not a mundane breakup song. "One" means unity, and the song suggests the subject is indeed lovelorn, but might be facing bigger issues. "You say one love, one life/When it's one need in the night/One love, we get to share it/leaves you, baby, if you don't care for it." The "care" has a double meaning which is echoed in the song: you can dislike, or not care for, Earl Gray tea or Don DeLillo novels, or not care as in neglect rather than nurture a plant, a relationship, or a person.
"Achtung Baby" marks U2 exploring new musical territory after several records influenced by America and the American musical vernacular: blues, soul, a little country. The German gives it away. "Achtung" is analogous to David Bowie's "Low" or Lou Reed's "Berlin," saturated with the melancholy of Mitteleuropa and the impossibility of complete and true knowledge of someone or something else. "We're one, but we're not the same" is repeated throughout the lyrics. The platonic ideal of not just romance but all human connection is to have a perfect understanding—to live in harmony—with another person. This oneness might be what we seek in a romantic partner as well as the presence of the divine in our lives. The loss of that possibility is, well, a colossal bummer.
"One" builds from how are you feeling to how are we obligated to God and humanity: "One love, one blood/One life you got to do what you should/One life, but we're not the same/We get to carry each other, carry each other." "Get to" sounds like all this schlepping is a privilege, not a colossal bummer. This obligation to others is a tremendous burden—and sorrow—to bear. To strive to be one, despite fundamental differences, is near impossible. "Did I ask too much? More than a lot/ You gave me nothing, now it's all I got," the speaker bitterly asserts in the middle of the song. The distance between one and nothing is incremental, but it's as easy to fall in love as it is to lose it.

2. "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" (Zooropa, 1993)

Rock music is rife with songs about men leaving. Monday morning all is fine, Friday they have traveling on their minds. Men ramble on, singing songs; take Thunder Road to the darkness at the edge of town; hop on the one after 909 or the midnight train to Georgia; run down the road trying to loosen their load with seven women on their mind; and, eventually, run on empty. Presumably, after that they return home.
What is “Stay” about? The lyrics tell a story of a desperate woman in a violent relationship and the man (or the angel?) who can’t save her. But who is it who can't, or won't, stay? The woman in the opening of the song? The man offstage, perpetuating the abuse? To live in a relationship like this one is also to be stuck in a moment, which we will get to momentarily. Both "Stay" and "Stuck in a Moment" describe situations you'd rather not stay or be stuck in.
"Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" is exceptional, a song both complex and direct. The subtext of "Stay" is the collision between a woman in peril and a man—maybe an angel—watching (and helping) her. "Stay" is a Jungian dream of a song, with U2 serving as hero/angel, downtrodden woman, God, and Satan. Its preoccupations and images—a woman buying cigarettes at a 7-Eleven at night, cautioned to "check [her] change"; the violence of a one-car accident, "your wheels are turning but you're upside down;" and the existence of angels reveal a deeper and more contemplative band than pre-Achtung U2.
U2 has a level of self-consciousness which could be called pretentious—I've probably called it that on occasion—but "Stay" doesn't traffic in pretense. It's raw and moving, but "Stay" is not a plea. It's a suggestion that grows stronger as the song progresses. “Stay” tells both stories, one of rambling and one of settling. In doing so it incorporates the mythology of the rambling man and the woman left behind.
If we borrow the Vivian Gornick method and posit each song has a situation and a story, the story of "Stay" is simple: a woman goes to buy cigarettes and is trapped in a U2 song. "You say when he hits you, you don't mind/Because when he hurts you, you feel alive/Oh no, is that what it is?" Bono is admittedly great here, sounding as if he just reached the disturbing truth as he sings the lyric. The vocal grows less tentative and more confident as the song unspools, offering exegesis, not advice. But the question at the heart of "Stay" is a stubborn one: How do you escape from a U2 song? Climb up the brittle vines that snake up from the slough of despair? Find a door that isn’t locked or a window that isn’t bricked? MacGyver yourself a jet pack?
"Stay" also works on another level which is about rock itself. Very few bands stay—stay intact, stay productive, stay connected to the fans who have made them successful. Even bands who have longevity and stamina fall prey to the lure of excess: more fame, more sex, more money, and less work. The bass player wants to play guitar. The guitar player has discovered free jazz. The frontman wants to save the world and stop hunger. The drummer buys an island somewhere warm, because he can.
"Stay" coincides with U2's friendship and collaborations with filmmaker Wim Wenders. Wenders works in chiaroscuro, his greys and shadows turn the world into a charcoal drawing. Wenders's film "Wings of Desire" (1987) is his initial foray into the clash between human and angel. "Faraway, So Close!" (1993), the title of another Wenders movie, is the oddly punctuated subtitle of "Stay."
The key to "Stay" is the possibility of angels. The song starts at night, at a green light. When the light turns red, it's morning, and the song builds until this verse where the singer reveals himself: "And if you look, you look through me/And when you talk, you talk at me/And when I touch you, you don't feel a thing." In that last line, the singer is teasing the listener, almost admitting he's not human. Who touches you without you feeling it? An angel is as good a hypothesis as any. Looking at the passage from the second person point-of-view, however, it's an expression of sympathy, or an attempt at empathy. If someone who regularly beats the crap out of you suddenly turns tender, numbness is a legitimate reaction.
The song really takes off around halfway through. Bono starts talking about staying, and it becomes both beautiful and wistful. It also shifts to first person, and the direct address gives the song immediacy. "And if you listen, I can't call/And if you jump, you just might fall, /And if you shout, I'll only hear you." But the lyric is not focused on the woman's situation. Her story is overshadowed by the angel’s melodrama (are all angels this cranky?). He can't stay. His fate if he becomes earthbound is sealed in the song's closing lines: "Just the bang and the clatter/As an angel hits the ground."
"Stay" reinforces one of U2's essential values. Unlike most bands who shatter, U2 stay. They stay together, stay productive, and stay restless enough to produce a great song every so often. I have no idea who is hanging posters of U2 in their bedrooms; who is hanging out in their subreddit; or why they have had such an extraordinary run. But "Stay" is an argument for U2 being on the side of the angels.

3. "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" (2000, All That You Can't Leave Behind)

"Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" is a Groundhog Day scenario reimagined as a love song. "Stuck" is U2’s attempt to talk about temptation and disappointment. Scuttlebutt says Bono wrote "Stuck" as a dialogue with his friend Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of INXS, who died from autoerotic asphyxiation in 1997. This is surprising because not only do U2 lack sexual charisma, they are also deeply void of kink. U2 is like a Ken doll: smooth and cold and impossible to arouse.
Some songs are sad because something happens: a plane crash; an invitation to drink Pina Coladas and commit adultery; a lost phone number; a dead friend. U2 writes songs that are sad because nothing happens. "Stuck" is a golden example of this: a morass of your own making, a situation where the blame is staunchly on the subject. "You are such a fool/To worry like you do./Oh I know it's tough/And you can never get enough/Of what you don't really need now." In lyrics like this U2 interrogate what we need to be happy: to feel some momentum toward love and lightness, and to endure the tough times until better times come.
"Stuck" ends on a note of optimism amidst the sadness: "It's just a moment/This time will pass."

Lisa Levy is a writer, essayist, and critic. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, the LARB, the CBC, the Believer, and LitHub, where she is a contributing editor. She is also a founding editor of Crime Reads. Her essay "We Are All Modern: Exploring the Vagaries of Consciousness in 20th & 21st Century Biography and Life Writing" which ran in Assay 8.1, won an Honorable Mention in Best American Essays 2021. Her book-in-progress, Funeral in my Brain: A Biography of Migraine, is a narrative of her 20-years of chronic-migraine; an examination of rapidly evolving migraine treatment; a consideration of creative and scientific works by migraineurs from Joan Didion and Charles Darwin to Edgar Allan Poe and Sigmund Freud; and a paean to new crop of migraine patient-advocates. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and their Basset hound, Daisy.