U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: Five Grammys, One Psalm
As expected, U2 cleaned up at the Grammy Awards on Wednesday night, with wins for Album of the Year, Song of the Year (“Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own” a.k.a, “Sometimes Even Bono Sings in a Really Annoying Falsetto”), Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (ditto), Rock Song of the Year (“City of Blinding Lights”), and Rock Album. As blogger Dena Ross wrote on Idol Chatter, “the people in the Recording Academy who decide the winners want to go to heaven–they’d be stupid to vote against God’s favorite band.”
While I often find myself singing and wiggling around the kitchen to “Vertigo” and “City of Blinding Lights,” I’d have to say that my favorite song from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is the more mellow “Yahweh,” a modern-day psalm or hymn along the lines of “Take My Life and Let It Be.”
I love the pun in the opening lines: “Take these shoes / Click-clacking down some dead-end street / Take these shoes / And make them fit.” Make them fit my feet, and make them fit for service. (It especially tickles me because there was a week about two years ago when, for some reason, U2’s song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” kept following me. It played everywhere I went, and I couldn’t escape it. The final straw was when I was shopping for shoes to fit my impossibly narrow feet, with no luck, and I heard the opening notes of the song playing over the store speakers. I now refer to it as my shoe-shopping song. Anyway, U2 and spiritual shoes: I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, but oh, please take these shoes and make them fit. The very way Bono intones the word “Yahweh” in the song’s chorus sounds the desperation of this prayer.)
Listening to the last verse (“Take this city / A city should be shining on a hill / Take this city / If it be your will”), I can’t help but think of Bono’s recent sermon at the National Prayer Breakfast, and I imagine that this is his plea for nations, as well as for the Church. He moves fluidly back and forth between community and individual as he finishes the song with “Take this heart / And make it break.” Silence. The abrupt end of the song. And that’s Bono’s prayer for all of us, as well as for himself. Take our hearts and make them break for Africa, for the poor, God’s beloved.
Add comment February 10th, 2006