The U2 song reinvented a Christmas carol: “It just slowly came together”
The most political band in rock music is no stranger to bringing back old folk songs – especially if there’s a story to tell.
In their 2009 album No Line on the Horizon, U2 weaved different narratives and often characters into the story of each song, with its most melancholic being ‘White as Snow’. The acoustic folk ballad trudges solemnly into a snowy scene with a minor-key accompaniment that evokes an encounter with the divine.
The Irish group have strong roots in religious symbolism and spiritual meanings, but in this case, the song was simply arranged to stay faithful to the ancient hymn from which it took its melody. The mournful Christmas carol ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’ is a soft echo into our medieval past, its origins dating back 900 years.
The song’s co-producer, Daniel Lanois, told The National Post that he and Bono had been looking for something on spiritual hymns for the album, and this carol had stood out. The song that came of it is “not identical, but it’s inspired by that, an old public domain melody”.
Adding, “I laid down a little piano version of that song, again, chopped it to a tempo. Then I came up with a vocal arrangement. Bono had this ‘white as snow’ idea. It just slowly came together.”
Bono’s ideas for stories to sing seem never-ending, and that’s probably because the vocalist has never hidden his love of books, from poetry to nonfiction to ancient myths. He had read William Golding’s 1956 novel ‘Pincher Martin’, a tale of shipwreck and salvation, and thought to bring his song’s character to the doorstep of death. His last thoughts colour the song’s lyrics, and although the voice was to be that of a soldier in Afghanistan, the song’s quiet fragility could be taking place anywhere.
The song “lasts the length of time it takes [the soldier] to die”, Bono told The Guardian. “We were going to start ‘White As Snow’ with an explosion – an early version had this industrial noise that sounded like the aftermath of a bomb.” Since the song timidly opens to a tip-toeing piano that slowly shifts to an intimate solo guitar, I’m quite content that the violent sound effects were excluded.
The song’s lyrics meditate on themes of redemption and purity, “Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not, Only the lamb as white as snow”, matching the feelings of yearning and hope that are central to the choir tune it was adapted from. The haunting liturgical weight from the original hymn is woven seamlessly into U2’s contemporary arrangement, its traditional piano melody echoing the timelessness of the tale.
Although it’s “essentially a big fat rock album” in Bono’s words, No Line on the Horizon is composed of “quieter, more meditative songs”, pondering our place on Earth and what that means. Season’s greetings take a more sombre turn with this pick, but the song’s slow simplicity is still suggestive of peaceful winter landscapes and intimacy. And being the sensitive rock star he is, Bono’s voice of a generation calls intimacy “the new punk rock”.
