‘Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own’: the U2 song The Edge called a cliché
It’s hard for any artist not to draw from the same tired lines that everyone has written before. There have been countless political songs that emphasise giving power to the people and far too many break-up songs with the title ‘Without You’, but even if U2 could have afforded to fall into a holding pattern, they still wanted to switch things up when they made a record.
I mean, look at what they did for their Songs of… trilogy. The whole thing is far from the most beloved part of their discography, given the nasty backlash to Songs of Innocence and the more tepid response to Songs of Surrender, but each of them at least offered something new rather than listening to them spinning their wheels for the better part of an hour. And as far back as the 2000s, they were still interested in making bold new innovations.
Were they going to piss off some people in the process? Oh, absolutely. All of those iPods that were sold thanks to the band licensing the song ‘Vertigo’ for Apple’s ad campaign weren’t going to win over the hearts of any purists in the audience, but How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was actually a far more interesting listen than the typical rock and roll affair from every other 1980s rocker.
From the guitar tones to Bono’s vocal performances, it was clear that they had been listening to bands like The Strokes and the new garage rock sound that was coming out of New York, but it would have been impossible to ignore their classics as well. When you hit on something like ‘One’ or ‘With or Without You’, that sound never really leaves, and the band still had fantastic ballads up their sleeve when they released ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’.
Then again, if someone doesn’t care for U2, this tune doesn’t give them the incentive to jump in, I suppose. The icy sound of The Edge’s guitar is still prominent, and the sing-along chorus is as anthemic as it was back in the day, but for all of their tunes that sound like they’re being beamed in from the other side of the world, it’s comforting seeing a lavish rock star like Bono admit that he needs someone else to help him get through the day every now and again.
But according to The Edge, the goal for the track was to have them move away from the thousands of generic roads they went down before, saying, “‘Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own’ is one of those songs that was very difficult to get right. It was so strong that we kept running into cliché as we put the arrangement together. It had this potential which we all understood, but we couldn’t find the way to play it. But as a tune we always thought, if we got it right, it was going to be a big song, and now I think it could be a massive song, simply because it’s a complete song.”
It’s definitely a slowburner compared to everything else on the record, but that’s part of the reason why it works so well. Whereas ‘Vertigo’ hits you like a slap in the face whenever it comes on, this feels like watching a musical landscape come to life over the course of a few minutes, with Bono pulling out the falsetto at the perfect time whenever the chorus rolls around.
The song did move out of that clichéd area that The Edge was talking about, but those kinds of stereotypical tactics work for a reason. The structure may be similar, but it’s all in the delivery, and when listening to Bono, you’re not simply hearing some pompous rocker in sunglasses. This is a man with as much self-doubt as anyone else, and the only way to let that out is through music.
