Earnest Anthems: U2 in the '80s

My 7 favorite U2 songs of all time

In the mid-to-late ‘80s, me and all my friends had the same favorite band. U2.

Most of us had migrated to U2 from the Police, which then dropped to second place but still mattered to us.

U2 was our band and all of us regularly if not daily put our favorite U2 songs on repeat on our CD players.

I’m old enough to remember, in my teens, when U2 only got airtime on alternative radio stations (soon to be dominated by the likes of R.E.M.) and, yes, Christian radio stations, alongside the likes of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. Three of the band members, including Bono, were followers of the Chinese Christian mystic Watchman Nee.

We loved U2 in the 1980s because they were earnest. And we’d never experienced music like this before.  They brought their spirituality into their music and applied it to the real world around us.

For me, seven U2 songs from the Eighties endure. I still listen to them all the time.

In these seven songs, we hear Bono sing about a crowd walking arm in arm in Poland, united as one.  About dead bodies – news he can’t make go away – after British soldiers have shot 26 unarmed Irish civilians, killing more than half of them.  About hearing the cries and the heartbeats of victims tortured and killed by a Latin American regime.  About shots ringing out in Memphis, taking the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., alongside lyrics about the crucifixion of Christ.

We hear Bono sing of sorrow, weeping, dust, deep and driving snow, being beaten down, walls holding us inside, and loveless, lifeless, hearts of clay.  Of twisting and turning away, torn in two.  Of dislocation, suffocation, desperation, separation, isolation, desolation.

He asks us how long we’re going to stay on this borderland.  And he sings of light in the distance, across fields, and of building a bridge across the sea and land.

He reminds us that all we have to do is to surrender, to let go, to let the walls come down, and to reach out.  We are here on Earth to love, and if we’re not sleeping, if we’re wide awake, we can reach out and touch the flame, we can walk into the Light. 

So let’s not look back, Bono urges us.  Let’s set our spirits free.  Even if they take our lives they cannot take our pride.  It’s time to heal.  Time to feel the sunlight on our faces.  To come home to that higher place.  To go there with each other.  To love and to be as one.

7. “New Year’s Day” features solid and tight drums, piano, and a perfect guitar solo.  It’s a warm, passionate, gripping tribute to the Solidarity movement in Poland.

   

6. “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” involves great drumming, great guitar playing, and a great blending of the two.  It expresses bewilderment and raw anger for the senseless suffering in Ireland.  Since neither side can “win”, the song calls both sides to move beyond their conflict and into unity.

   

5. “Mothers of the Disappeared” stands out for its Spanish guitar melody.  The song evokes the anguish of mothers who’d lost a son or daughter who had opposed an evil regime and had then disappeared without a trace, never to be seen again.  We’re taken into the suffering of the innocent – the kidnappings, torture, and murders – in the lands of dictatorship.  The terror of death squads is intense – tragic, profoundly sad, ominous, and haunting. 

   

4. “Pride (In the Name of Love)” is a powerful anthem about Christ and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., driven home by the Edge’s guitar and the voice of Bono, who pours his heart and soul into the so g.  It’s full of passionate spiritual energy and evokes it evokes enlightened freedom and courage.

   

3. “A Sort of Homecoming” has an entrancing energy to it that triggers a spiritual experience.  It’s rousing and uplifting and makes you ache for the beautiful dream that life could be.

   

2. “Where the Streets Have No Name” starts with the best beginning to a song ever.  It’s slow, dramatic, and swelling and it transports you into the greatest sense of awe and feeling of expectation you’ve ever experienced.  As if the sun is rising on what’s going to be the most glorious day of your life.  Truly sublime.  Then you realize you’re listening to an epic anthem, speaking deep into your soul, calling you to transcend all borders and divides and limits and enter into a primal and spiritually pure freedom.  It’s a song of yearning and anticipation for the soaring possibilities in our imaginations.  And if you believe in the afterlife, it’s a song about Heaven.

   

   1. “Bad”

   And then there’s “Bad”, which I’ve always called “Wide Awake”.  From empathy and depth, the song conveys something universal and eternal.  It calls us to break free from everything that tethers us to our wounded, scarred, earth-bound, mortal self and enter a higher, more open sphere.  To leave behind our inner turmoil and be elevated into that space.  To be liberated.  To discover what’s best within us.  To step into the beauty of the Light and to grow and be healed.

   In a thousand listens across four decades, this song has never failed to take me places. It expands my consciousness every single time — takes me into transcendent and sacred space no other “secular” song can take me into. For me, there’s no song even remotely like “Bad”. For me, it’s the number one song of all time. And for me, it’s a sublime spiritual experience.