joyfulgirl
Blue Crack Addict
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2001
- Messages
- 16,690
Okay, let's review the perfect timing of this post.
Starting off my sure-to-come succession of posts with an easy one...
My favorite song in the world is One Tree Hill by U2. I swear, they have never written a better song. When I listen I can feel the grief it was born from.
The song is powerful, with a great vocal performance. It brings this aura of darkness, or maybe mystique, in it. I also find the shift from Trip Through Your Wires to One Tree Hill on the Joshua Tree a very perfect match. Every time I listen to the album I get excited- five more songs, four more songs, three more songs... It's also a pleasure to have my least favorite song on the album preluding my favorite.
The layers of this song are deep and haunting. There's the ever-so-subtle bass, those complicated drums, the scratchy guitar that I can hear underneath all this, never fading away, and the other instrumental work- I've never been able to tel what those other instruments are. It sounds like a synth, or likes waves unfolding. But all my praise wil forever go to the vocals. Quite clearly the best part of the song- and recorded in ONE take. How did something so perfect come out of one take? The mind boggles.
Here I find Bono's voice soft and soothing, not over the top like in Bulet The Blue Sky or pleasantly deep like With or Withot You. This is a tone of voice I love. Sounds a bit choked too. The lyrics are poetry, with the continuing "You/It/We run like a river" bringing it all back around. I love the word change on each of the choruses. The lyrical progression is pretty interesting to- from a personal first verse, to a political second verse, to a third verse that seems to blend both themes. In the third verse comes my favorite lines- "I'll see you again when the stars fall from the sky, and the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill."
Then, of course, everything changes by the end. The end is phenomenal. "And when it's raining, raining hard... that's when the rain will break my heart..." The guitar turns agressvie and the vocals change from melodic to screechy. I'm still not sure how anyone can scream until a word is no longer a word, it is a sound. Anway, this part is so emotional, I just adore it. "Rain" will never mean the same thing to me again. As the impassioned screaming continues, the song has broken from the ever-building form of the previous verses, and then it's just- silent. This would be the part to turn it off. However, after a moment of silence the words are drawn back in- "Oh great ocean, oh great sea. Run to the ocean, run to the sea." By far this is probably the easiest part of the song to sing, and it's the most powerful of all. I love the emotions conveyed through the vocals. That's when I realize, I have not just listened to a song, I've listened to an epic poem.
Live does the song justice. The screaming is usually dropped out in favor of a killer guitar solo, but in the version from the Point Depot Lovetown show (not sure which one) there's this frenzy of scat-singing, very emotive. It grabs my heart. I freaking love it. I want to die listening to this song, or have it played at my funeral (though I get the idea that the song's exclusive and can't be played for just anyone).
And that's all I have to say about One Tree Hill. Ask for me later, at 11 PM or so, and I'll go into more detail with different music.