One of My Favorite Songs (and why you should care)

Words – spoken, written or sung – are meant to inspire. Not inspire in the sense of “oh, now I feel so good about life/myself”, but inspire in the literal air-breathed-into-you kind of way. One man’s mind or thoughts given over to another (with the best hopes of an accurate translation). Words are about life and words are always truth or a lie.

That makes songs (and understanding good songs) important. Music makes the words dance in our head, leads the steps, but the words you hear tell you things about life – and life is a good thing to try to understand.

I’ll start with an easy one for me: Bad, by U2. It’s always best to have context for interpretation. U2 wrote this song about drug addiction, which they saw gripping Ireland. It’s written as sung (spoken) to an addict, from a non-user. When I think of addiction, I think of sin. Sin drugs our soul in a more gripping way than any chemical could addle our body and brain. A user cannot detox themselves from their drug without help from loving, caring, invested non-addicts. We all cannot be delivered from the dark draw of sin without the loving, caring, invested Father. That’s the part of life which this song helps me understand.

Things I like about this song:

1. The “rending” picture of the first stanza
2. The open, hopeful, desperation
3. The darkness and the light, sleeping and awake
4. The breaking nature of deliverance
5. Knowing that even drug addiction is a symptom of the spirit
6. This list: desperation, dislocation, separation, condemnation, revelation, in temptation, isolation, desolation
7. It’s U2, which means the music is flippin’ awesome

Bad – U2

If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would let it go, surrender, dislocate

If I could throw this lifeless lifeline to the wind
Leave this heart of clay, see you walk, walk away
Into the night and through the rain
Into the half-light and through the flame

If I could through myself set your spirit free
I’d lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light and to the day

Ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh
Ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh

To let it go and so to fade away
To let it go and so fade away
I’m wide awake, I’m wide awake, wide awake
I’m not sleeping, oh no, no, no

If you should ask then maybe they’d
Tell you what I would say, true colors fly in blue and black
Bruised silken sky and burning flag
Colors crash, collide in blood shot eyes

Ooh ooh, ooh ooh
Ooh ooh

If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would let it go, this desperation, dislocation
Separation, condemnation, revelation
In temptation, isolation, desolation

Let it go and so fade away, to let it go
Oh yeah and so fade away, to let it go, oh no
And so to fade away, I’m wide awake, I’m wide awake
Wide awake, I’m not sleeping, oh no, no, no

~ by mrigdon on July 4, 2009.