6.11.2011

Some Spider-related lyric comments

I've been enjoying the previews of the Spider-Man soundtrack (more, in fact, than I enjoyed the music when I saw the show). It seems to me that both "Pull The Trigger" and "DIY World" are telling examples of a genre to which Bono and Edge have been drawn musically and lyrically before: exposing evil by depicting it unflichingly. While "Trigger" is a way better listen, I think, and also has a major modern-day political undercurrent to it (let the reader understand), it sticks to some fairly standard U2 "sin" themes (betrayal, violence, shame, fear), whereas "DIY World" newly tackles a widespread contemporary sin, the desire to live without limits and endlessly to construct and reconstruct one's own identity/reality rather than accept the givens of creation. There is some stuff about accepting limits joyfully on NLOTH, but I'm not, at the moment, recalling any previous work that enters into the negativity of rejecting creation/natural law (if you can call it that) in an effort to expose that attitude as wrong.

I don't know how the function of "Boy Falls From the Sky" has changed from its role in the earlier 1.0 version, but I was sad to see that as the song has become less dark and less of an expression of sensing oneself to be a failure, one of my favorite couplets in the show is gone
"Savior, save yourself" - can't even get that right!
I used to use a single thread to cross the sky.

However, as I remarked to some friends, the new couplet
Lighting splits the sky and kisses your face;
Yours the sacrifice, yours the grace

lets the song still hang on to a nice Good Friday reference. ;-)

1 comment:

Booty Chesterfield said...

The Boys can still bring it live too. I just caught their show. Last time was 1987 Joshua tree. Here is a full report:
http://bootychesterfield.blogspot.com/2011/06/u2-even-better-than-ankle-sprang.html