While some have told me they’re not digging U2’s new album, I’m loving it more and more as I listen to it.
Did a little research on the somber track “White as Snow,” of which I originally said, “The opening guitar, bass and vocals immediately remind me of Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson (U2’s worked with and written songs for both musicians in the past). Yet the melody reminds me of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.†It will be interesting to see if Bono blends the songs in concert.”
Turns out, according to the Guardian, the melody is intentionally that of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”
“There are a couple of songs from the point of view of an active soldier in Afghanistan,” Bono told me back in June 2008, at the group’s Hanover Quay studio in Dublin, during a break in recording, “and one of them, White As Snow, lasts the length of time it takes him to die”….
The song’s melody is based on an old hymn, Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel, that, according to The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal, was composed by “an unknown author, circa 1100″…
The idea of a song based on the dying thoughts of a soldier initially came to Bono after he read William Golding’s ambitious novel, Pincher Martin, which is told from the point of view of a British sailor who appears to have survived the torpedoing of his ship. As he approaches death, his thoughts roam back over his life, and the moral choices he made or avoided.
While the dying soldier isn’t quite what I had in mind when listening to it – it does add a whole new dimension to the lyrics and the song… another reason I keep digging U2.
And here are the some of the lyrics I was originally looking for, before my pleasant sidetrack…
Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not
Only the lamb as white as snow…
Now this dry ground, it bears no fruit at all
Only poppies laugh under the crescent moon
The road refuses strangers
The land, the seeds we sow
Where might we find the lamb as white as snow
As boys we would go hunting in the woods
To sleep the night shooting out the stars
Now the wolves are every passing stranger
Every face we cannot know
If only a heart could be as white as snow
If only a heart could be as white as snow
BTW – I think I’m gonna buy the Vinyl LP next week when it’s released and maybe the Digi-Pack. What about you?