So a few weeks back I was pontificating about just how awful John Mayer is. Well, he still is and nothing’s changed although, admittedly, he’s got an absolutely first-rate rhythm section now, including the brilliant Pino Palladino on bass. Which means the front man still blows but at least his backing band crushes.
Anyhoo, one of my major gripes was the lameosity of Mayer’s lyrics, mainly because they’re so mindblowingly lame. I pointed out that despite the fact that many of my very favorites are folks like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and Paul Westerberg, who are known for their outstanding lyrics, I don’t need great lyrics. More important, rock and roll doesn’t need great lyrics to be great.
Which brings me to today’s blather: the most overrated lyricist in rock and roll history. That would, of course, be Bono.
Don’t get wrong, I like Bono a lot, both as a musician and as a guy. In fact, I think he’s one of the studs of the entire world for risking his band and his career to do what he thinks is right when there was absolutely no upside to it for him at all, other than the upside that always comes with doing right and being right. That’s pretty cool. No, that’s damn cool.
But his lyrics are hit-and-miss. Which is no crime, by any means, except that he’s often held up as this paragon of erudite lyricism, as befits the frontman of the world’s biggest and best (just ask Bono) rock and roll band. Which isn’t a crime either, of course, but it is something which should be addressed but never seems to be.
I jumped on the U2 bandwagon pretty late. A lot of my friends were already diggin’ ‘em by their first or second album. Me, I couldn’t help but admit that I thought the drum intro to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was cool—"martial funk" it was once dubbed—but I docked it a few points for the fact that it was in reality so easy that even I could play it.
And I really dug "New Year’s Day," with its incredible minimalist piano hook, its minor key, brooding melody and dark if unclear lyrics clashing nicely with its quick tempo and the passion with which Bono sung. At the time, however, Bono could do little right in my eyes, and his passion was already easy to disdain. Why I admired that same passion in, say, James Brown and Bruce Springsteen but not Bono isn’t clear to me now. I suppose it’s just a case of the ones you like being able to do no wrong, and the ones you don’t being able to do no right. Not cool, but then that’s human nature. Most of all, of course, they had stupid haircuts, see, and that was a major knock against a band back then. (Top Management, meanwhile, only listened to bands back then if they had stupid haircuts: hello, Duran Duran! Adam Ant, how nice to see you and where on earth have you been for the past twenty years?)
I should have loved U2’s next album, The Unforgettable Fire, produced as it was by my boy Brian Eno. But it had what is still my least favorite U2 anthem, "Pride (In the Name of Love)," an overwrought piece of heart-on-sleeve emoting to which, given the subject matter, I thought they had no right. Yes, I was a putz (although it really is one of their weaker hits). Moreover, I didn’t just dislike the song and resent their in-your-face moral stance, I thought the lyrics were weak. And I was right.
So then their next album, The Joshua Tree, comes out and everyone goes insane. And me and my boy Dave see the "Where the Streets Have No Name" video where they’re up on the rooftop in LA and we’re all like, "Yo yo yo, whassup wit’ dat, a-ight? Them boys think they’re like all the Beatles and whatnot." Only we didn’t say it like that. Because we didn’t start talking like that until four years after it was no longer cool to do so and three years after it stopped being even remotely funny.
And that offended me too—the video, not our stupid way of speaking—these young whippersnappers so clearly trying to take up the mantle of the Beatles. As if. Except that, aside from the fact that no one will ever be able to, it was an amazing song and a fantastic video. And that although they’ll never be the Beatles, they have indeed come as close as any band ever has or ever will.
I still didn’t like the preachy quality to their songs and the religiosity made me squirm. But I could no longer come close to denying the power of their music, especially after Rattle and Hum. It may indeed have been as masturbatory as the critics at the time claimed when they almost universally savaged it but I think they were missing the point. As Muhammad Ali once said, it’s not bragging if you can back it up. So self-congratulatory? Yeah, probably. But if there’s someone out there doing something as magnificent as that live version in Harlem of "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For," well, they oughtta get out in the limelight and show off a bit. If you can, you should. In fact, as someone once said, because you can, you must.
And then Achtung Baby came along and that was all she wrote. From the opening seconds to the amazing fade-out, this is one of the greatest albums of all-time, up there with The Sun Sessions and Blonde on Blonde and Abbey Road and Who’s Next and Led Zeppelin IV and Born to Run and Nevermind and Automatic for the People. And although they’ve not hit those heights again, who can blame ‘em? You write To Kill a Mockingbird, you don’t never need to write nothin’ else ever again.
And they’ve written plenty of other great things. Their flops have been better than were received at the time and their successes have been justified. If All that You Can’t Leave Behind isn’t as cohesive and overpowering as Achtung Baby, what of it? It’s a fantastic short story collection. Not everything needs to be an epic novel.
So I’ve been thinking about all this for about six months, wondering if I dared infuriate and/or depress some regular Left of the Dial readers. Well, there are no regular Left of the Dial readers, but there are some who read it on a regular basis. And at least two of them are huge U2 fans, so I’ve been reticent to write this. But they both saw the band a few nights ago in Cleveland and that makes me hate them just enough to finally get this out of my system.
Actually, however, that’s not the true impetus; even I’m not (quite) that petty. The true impetus is this: I got some unexpected support for my point of view recently. And since that guy was specifically criticizing Bono’s lyrics and happened to be Bono himself, well, it suddenly seemed considerably less heretical.
[In fact, it makes me feel like I’m jumping on the bandwagon and piling on unnecessarily. Since he started it, and it now seems to be a pigpile of exactly two—just me and him—I guess it’s not too much bullying to countenance.]
A recent issue of Rolling Stone has an interview with Bono and includes a sidebar where he pretends he’s a critic and goes through U2’s catalog album by album. And he’s pretty harsh on himself. For instance, he says of "Pride": "There was a lot of emotion in there, but to be honest with you, it’s a daft lyric. No, not daft. It’s just not deft. It’s a missed opportunity."
He was right the first time. It’s pretty daft. But that’s okay. I can live with "not deft."
Some other examples, this one from "Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses":
You’re dangerous ‘cuz you’re honest
You’re dangerous, you don’t know what you want
I gringed the first time I heard that one. Perhaps because I think I first heard it in Creative Writing 102, in a poem written by a girl with the nickname "Cookie" about how her boyfriend just doesn’t understand her. Ugh. [That "ugh" refers, of course, to the lyrics—Cookie was really quite cute. But then, with writing like that, not to mention a name like that, she'd have to be, wouldn't she?] Bono could write a more trite line (triter?), a bigger cliché. Maybe. But I really hope he doesn’t.
Or this verse from "Elevation":
A mole, living in a hole
Digging up my soul
Going down, excavation
I and I in the sky
You make me feel like I can fly
So high, elevation
What the hell? What was he thinking? That’s just really freakin’ lame. I mean, that sucks.
It is, as far as all available evidence indicates, nearly impossible to use the word "mole" in a rock song and have it sound cool. And it’s obvious why they used it: "excavation" is a fantastic rhyme with "elevation." And what excavates? Why, a mole living in a hole digging up my soul. Well, a mole does, at least. You know, if he's living in a hole. And you could maybe make an argument about extending the soul metaphor, but I doubt you could make one that would convince me it makes up for the simple uttering of the word "mole" in a rock song and even if you could you wouldn’t be able to convincingly argue that Bono does so, uh…convincingly.
As Bono said of the first album: "Spoiled, or let’s say soiled, by unfinished lyrics." Of War: "Great collection of songs. Strong in content but poor in lyrical execution." Inexplicably, however, he has praise for their second album, which is really a blight on their catalog. See? Even when criticizing himself he screws up.
So, what’s my point? Just to shoot a sacred cow? No, not at all. Just the opposite, actually.
My point is this: it doesn’t matter. When his lyrics are great, that’s great. And when they’re not, it doesn’t matter. The lyrics to "Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" start off terrible and get better but I’m still not convinced they add up to anything significant. And it just doesn’t matter. Because when he comes out of the bridge and starts singing "don’t turn around" and then finally screams "don’t you look back" it’s the kind of magical moment only rock and roll of the highest quality can deliver, aurally contagious goosebumps in an emotionally overwhelming and sonically crushing package.
The lyrics to "Elevation" blow. They’re amongst the weakest of the band’s entire career. And it don’t matter. Not one bit. Because it’s still a great song. The music is phenomenal and, bless his heart, Bono uses all his passion to sing those stupid words as though they’re Shakespeare. And that’s all that’s needed. With a guitar part that crunchy and a rhythm section that propulsive and a vocalist who can deliver a performance that convincing, you don’t need anything else. You just hang on for the ride and go along to wherever it takes you.
That’s great rock and roll. Delivered by a great, great rock and roll band.
Author’s note: the word "gringe," used up above, is an obscure term that refers to the act of cringing and grinning simultaneously. It’s not often done and therefore not often used but nothing else quite captures the same flavour. Feel free to use it but keep in mind that I've trademarked it so everytime you do you owe me a nickel.
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