“Never misses”: U2’s best song, according to Bono
The divisive U2 frontman Bono has rarely shied from giving his view on almost any topic, especially in the realms of music and politics. For Bono, music and politics serve similar functions. He believes that music should have a driving purpose beyond aural satisfaction, whether it’s evident in the lyrics or conveyed by the performance attitude.
As a leading force in the post-punk era, U2 wielded combatant angst through much of their early material. While their later music drifted towards anthems and balladry, Bono remains insistent that discerning music should carry a degree of aggression.
During a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone, Bono opined that music today has “gotten very girly”. He added: “There are some good things about that, but hip-hop is the only place for young male anger at the moment – and that’s not good.”
“When I was 16, I had a lot of anger in me,” he continued. “You need to find a place for it and for guitars. The moment something becomes preserved, it is fucking over. You might as well put it in formaldehyde. In the end, what is rock ‘n’ roll? Rage is at the heart of it. Some great rock’ n’ roll tends to have that, which is why The Who were such a great band. Or Pearl Jam. Eddie [Vedder] has that rage.”
Later in the feature, Bono offered some reparation for his previous comments, which could have been construed as misogynistic. “Does anyone know the genius singer from Iceland called Björk? She’s really one of my absolute favourite singers,” he said. “She used to say, ‘In Iceland, you know, we see musicians, artists, like carpenter or plumber.’ And I was like, that’s exactly how I see it. I see songs as kind of solutions to problems. I can’t explain that, but it means I cannot – as a lot of artists do – look down on business”.
The frontman continued: “In the real view of the world – in God’s view or the view of social justice – a mother or a fireman or a school teacher, they’re incredible people who are not given the kind of recognition that people who can remember their lines – actors, singers, musicians – get”.
While Bono likes to hear music from the angry male youth, U2 diverged from their more aggressive, punk-associated roots through the mid-1980s in favour of anthemic stadium fillers. Many fans will pick out a track from the band’s revolutionary 1987 album, The Joshua Tree, as a favourite from U2’s anthemic oeuvre, but for Bono, it’s all about 1993’s ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!)’.
Where Achtung Baby dipped in the waters of experimentalism, Zooropa plunged listeners into the abyss of esoteric pop. The band abandoned the American and British textures of their earlier work to embrace the sounds of continental Europe. There’s something pleasantly German about the title track, much as there’s enjoyably Italian about the bass-heavy ‘Lemon’. The Edge sings on ‘Numb’, making it one of a handful of songs that he sings, and Bono delivers the most confident vocal of his career on ‘Stay (Far Away, So Close)’.
In an interview with The Irish Post in 2018, Bono discussed the early-90s anthem as “perhaps the greatest U2 song,” adding that it had the “most extraordinary contour of a melody. It’s really quite sophisticated. The lyric never misses”.
During earlier performances of the track, Bono would say, “This is from the period where we got art-y, we went to Berlin, and started out on two extraordinary albums by our point of view. Then we thought we were genius. Pop we just floated out there.. this song was kind of a diary of the float.. you find some extraordinary things while you are out there.”
U2’s guitarist, The Edge, was also present and agreed, asserting that ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!)’ was “the stand-out track” on U2’s 1993 album Zooropa.
