U2 - One - The story Behind the Song

U2-1

ARTIST: U2

ALBUM: Achtung Baby

RELEASING DATE: 1991

GENRE: Rock

NOMINATIONS: Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with

 

The famous song is also known as ''one'' it was by an Irish rock band U2 which was released in 1992 in their album Achtung Baby. while a recording of this song in Hasna Studios in Berlin, conflicts arose between the members of the band over the direction of sound quality. This conflicts resulted in the band members to separate until they achieved a breakthrough with this song ''ONE''. They took the inspiration from the Guitarist ''the Edge'', when he was playing the guitar in the studio and the chord progression, was the key which makes the hit to them.  Lyrics were also inspiration from the fractured relation of the band which was written by the lead singer Bono.

The song ONE took the top position in the Irish Singles Charts and US Billboard Album Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Track Charts. The band filmed several music videos for the promotion of the song.

After the release of the song, it was featured in polls of the greatest songs of all the time by the critiques.'' One'' is often used by bands to promote human rights and social justice causes and it helped to raise charity to Bono's charitable organisation, the ONE Campaign.

Lyrics

Is it getting better

Or do you feel the same?

Will it make it easier on you now?

You got someone to blame

You say, one love, one life (One life)

It's one need in the night

One love (one love), get to share it

Leaves you, darling, if you don't care for it

Did I disappoint you?

Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?

You act like you never had love

And you want me to go without

Well it's too late, tonight

To drag the past out into the light

We're one, but we're not the same

We get to carry each other

Carry each other

One, one

One, one

One, one

One, one

Have you come here for forgiveness?

Have you come to raise the dead?

Have you come here to play Jesus?

To the lepers in your head

Well, did I ask too much, more than a lot?

You gave me nothing, now it's all I got

We're one, but we're not the same

See we hurt each other, then we do it again

You say love is a temple, love is a higher law

Love is a temple, love is a higher law

You ask me of me to enter, but then you make me crawl

And I can't keep holding on to what you got, 'cause all you got is hurt

One love

One blood

One life

You got to do what you should

One life

With each other

Sisters and my brothers

One life

But we're not the same

We get to carry each other, carry each other

One, one

One, one

One

One love, one life

The story behind the Song U2 , ‘’One’’

On December 31, 1989, Bono took a moment during a hometown performance to air his band's unclean laundry. The boys were beyond worn out as U2 reached the home stretch of the Lovetown Tour, which had been started earlier that year to support the promotion of Rattle And Hum. The Edge's marriage to his high school sweetheart had begun to fall apart, and Bono's wife had given birth to the couple's first kid earlier that year. There were also artistic issues that showed themselves on Rattle And Hum and carried over into the current tour.

During an encore of "Love Rescue Me," Bono informed the fans, "This is simply the conclusion of something for U2 and that's why we're having these shows." It isn't a big deal. We simply need to stop here and start dreaming anew.

That was a subtle way of phrasing it. In all honesty, U2 were losing their mojo. Although Rattle and Hum was intended as a tribute to roots music, it was the group's clumsiest album since October and evidence that U2's interest in the American Midwest had peaked. Years later, Larry Mullen Jr. reflected on the tour, saying it was enjoyable but added to the criticism of the Rattle and Hum album and movie, which essentially said, "U2 go to America and discover the blues and are telling us everything about it, as if we didn't know."

The city was ecstatic. But when the Wall separating East and West Berlin came down, new walls were being erected between the four members of U2. Hip-hop, Madchester, and club music were good places to start when Bono and the Edge decided to experiment with new sounds. The only person with any actual nightclub experience, Adam Clayton, informed the others that they knew nothing about dance music. Mullen, meantime, objected to the drum machines that producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno had brought into the recording space. He wasn't supposed to play percussion for the band, was he?

U2's future was uncertain, but "One" actually pulled the group back together. The Edge started writing a bridge for the song that would eventually become "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" when he was working one evening at Hansa Studios, the creative hub for David Bowie and Eno's revolutionary collaboration in the 1970s. He played a few minor chords on the piano before coming up with a solution in a major key. A new song was created when he changed to the acoustic guitar and began to play the portions back-to-back. The other members of the band joined in, and Bono began to improvise lyrics after receiving an offer to attend a festival called Oneness from the Dalai Lama. The framework for "One" was finished in a matter of minutes.

"One" gets down to the heart of a relationship on an album full of irony, sensuality, and self-deprecation. Is it getting better? is a question that is posed in each stanza. Did I let you down? Have you come here seeking forgiveness? - without responding with any questions. Aiming his questions at his band, his spouse, the Edge's estranged wife, or perhaps none of the above, Bono keeps things purposefully unclear. The recipients are irrelevant. After all, "One" is about surrender, not love.

U2 by Neil McCormick quoted Bono as saying, "The tune is a little warped." According to U2, "I never understood why people wanted it at their weddings. I've met at least 100 people who said they experienced it at their weddings. I ask them, "Are you insane? It involves breaking up!

U2 didn't break up, though. They completed Achtung Baby, which transformed the band's sound, image, and audience, after tying up some loose ends in Berlin and flying back to Dublin. The God-fearing lads who had seemed so sincere and unabashedly self-righteous during the Rattle And Hum era had developed into intelligent, at ease men who could laugh at their own achievements. Finally embracing the "rockstar" persona that his profession allowed, Bono even started being goofy onstage while wearing leather jackets and huge sunglasses. The remainder of the band did the same.

The human pulse that beats between the flashy, industrial gloss of "Even Better Than The Real Thing" and "Until The End Of The World" is "One," though, and it is Achtung Baby's most exposed moment. Up until the final 30 seconds of the song, when Bono switches into a stunning falsetto, he sings the lyrics in a half-broken voice that sounds exhausted and sad. The Edge does the same approach here as he did when he closed "With Or Without You" with a straightforward guitar pattern rather than a traditional solo: he weaves ringing, slightly delayed quarter notes around Bono's vocals. The lyrics of the song ("We're one, yet we're not the same / We get to carry each other") may have served as inspiration for how the two parts support one another.

Although "One" may have been concocted in a frenetic half-hour of inspiration, it has a long shelf life. Since 1992, the song has been performed at each U2 concert. It was performed by Johnny Cash for American III: Solitary Man in 2000, and Mary J. Blige scored a success with her own rendition six years later, transforming the fragile song into a hymn for unification. Recently, "One" has also been associated with Bono's social activism, even serving as the inspiration for the name of the ONE Campaign.

People frequently credit U2's success to their capacity to innovate, evolve, and adapt while frequently staying one step ahead of the pack. The song "One," which broke through a decade's worth of self-important rock and roll and announced something different, was the group's first significant transition. Following these changes, U2 eventually went back to the anthems that had launched their career. However, Achtung Baby wouldn't exist without "One"... In addition, U2 would not exist without Achtung Baby.