The U2 song that made The Edge cry: “The lyric became more universal”
Laying down any tracks in a studio can be an emotional experience for musicians. Everyone has tried to make whatever songs fall into their head in their bedroom, but when they start coming to life on the final tape, it’s difficult to see musical babies finally grow up and get unleashed into the world. U2 are no strangers to keeping their material close to the chest, but hearing the final version of ‘Original of the Species’ was enough to leave The Edge in shambles.
Then again, any U2 classic has to be doing something very right to get past some of the background the group has. As much as they have talent, some of their preachiness can turn people off when Bono decides that the people need to hear his insight into the greater problems with the world.
And especially in the age after they partnered with Apple to unveil their new iPod model, the group now looked like one of the biggest sellouts that the rock world had ever known. But selling out doesn’t mean that the good songs have to dry up, and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is still a fairly solid record when taken on its own.
Granted, all that All That You Can’t Leave Behind needed to do was not give fans another version of Pop, so when a track like ‘Vertigo’ hit the airwaves, it was like the band that made The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby were finally here to stay, complete with tunes that sounded like they actually gave a damn again like ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’.
But while some tunes still had that political edge to them, ‘Original of the Species’ was a much more broad song of experience. Years before the album Songs of Experience brought less legitimacy to that last sentence, Bono seemed to be speaking to anyone who had ever struggled in their lives, as he talks about kids not understanding the world around them but still finding ways to slow down and appreciate the life they have.
For The Edge, that meant more than just platitudes. Bono had initially started the track as a tribute to the guitarist’s daughter, so when he heard it coming together, the delay-driven master fell to pieces, saying, “The last time I cried was listening to that song. It was a song Bono started on the last record about my daughter Hollie. He’s her godfather. The lyric became more universal. About being young and full of doubt about yourself.”
But Bono always had a knack for putting that universal sheen on every one of their ballads. There are bound to be real relationships tied up in tunes like ‘So Cruel’ or ‘Drowning Man’, but by keeping things sparse, U2 turned their material into hymns of perseverance, practically proclaiming that everyone deserves a shot at redemption if they work hard enough.
So, really, ‘Original of the Species’ is probably the best that fans could have asked for out of U2 since the turn of the 2000s. When all of their contemporaries were signing tour contracts and cashing their paychecks, Bono still seemed to be writing purely because he wanted to help people.
