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U2: No Line on the Horizon

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Island Records
Released: 2009.03.02
Time:
 53:46
Category: Pop/Rock
Producer(s): Brian Eno, Danny Lanois, Steve Lillywhite
Rating: *......... (1/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.u2.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2009.02.27
Price in €: 13,99





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] No Line on the Horizon (Bono/B.Eno/DLanois/U2) - 4:12
[2] Magnificent (Bono/Edge/B.Eno/D.Lanois/U2) - 5:24
[3] Moment of Surrender (Bono/B.EnoD.Lanois/U2) - 7:24
[4] Unknown Caller (Bono/B.Eno/D.Lanois/U2) - 6:02
[5] I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (Bono/U2) - 4:13
[6] Get on Your Boots (Bono/U2) - 3:25
[7] Stand Up Comedy (Bono/U2) - 3:49
[8] Fez- Being Born (Bono/B.Eno/D.Lanois, U2) - 5:16
[9] White as Snow - (B.Eno/D.Lanois/U2/Traditional) - 4:41
[10] Breathe (Bono/U2) - 5:00
[11] Cedars of Lebanon (Bono/B.Eno/D.Lanois, U2) - 4:16

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Paul "Bono Vox" Hewson - Vocals, Guitar, Arranger
The Edge - Guitars, Vocals, Piano, Arranger
Adam Clayton - Bass Guitar, Arranger
Larry Mullen Jr. - Drums, Percussion, Arranger

Brian Eno - Synthesizer, Arranger, Programming, Vocals, Producer, Rhythm Loops
Danny Lanois - Guitar, Vocals, Producer, Mixing
Terry Lawless - Piano, Keyboards, Fender Rhodes
Sam O'Sullivan - Percussion, Studio Manager, Drum Technician

Louis Watkins - Soprano Vocal
Caroline Dale - Cello
Cathy Thompson - Violin
Richard Watkins - French Horn

Steve Lillywhite - Producer, Mixing
Richard Rainey - Engineer, Mixing
Declan Gaffney - Engineer, Mixing
CJ Erikson - Engineer, Mixing
Carl Glanville - Engineer, Mixing
Dave Emery - Engineer
Tony Mangurian - Programming, Engineer
Florian Ammon - Additional Engineer
Cenzo Townshend - Additional Engineer, Mixing
Chris Heaney - Assistant
Tommy Hough - Assistant
Kevin "kevo" Wilson - Assistant
Dave Clauss - Assistant
John C.F. Davis - Mastering
Sam O'Sullivan - Studio Manager, Drum Technician
Rab McAllister - Studio Technician
Dallas Schoo - Guitar Technician
Cheryl Engels - Coordination, Audio Post-Production, Quality Control
Hiroshi Sugimoto - Cover Photo
Anton Corbijn - Photography
Shaughn McGrath - Design
Steve Averill - Design Consultant
Steve Matthews - Album Production Coordination
Candida Bottaci - Album Production Coordination
 

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s

2009 CD Interscope  001263002
2009 CD Vertigo 1796028
2009 CD Island 1796037

No Line On The Horizon, the new studio album from U2, will be released on Tues, March 3, 2009. The band’s 12th studio album calls on the production talents of long-time collaborators Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, with additional production by Steve Lillywhite. The album will be available in 5 different packages.

No Line On The Horizon is U2's twelfth studio album, and follows the massive success of 2004's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. The first single from the album, "Get On Your Boots", may be an all-out rocker akin to previous successes like "Vertigo", but the remainder of the album sees the band diversifying in ways similar to their Zooropa days. It is inescapably a U2 album, though, so Bono's vocals still speak of injustices personal and global, and The Edge's guitar work continues to be both feathery and metallic in equal dose. As far as continuing the band's lengthy career goes, No Line On The Horizon is simultaneously a crowd-pleaser and musical step forward.



What a shame!

I'm not sure we buyed the same album with the reviweers behind this lines... This is the worst thing U2 ever produced in their career since Pop. Pop was a bit experimental, therefore 2 stars, but they make the same error twice and this results in one star less. Sonme songs sounds Queenish, some like a bad boy-band of the '90s and some like nothing. On this album i miss everyrhing of U2, especial their speciality - the fine mixture of softness and hard rock. Bono's voice is somewhere in nirvana, but not in the songs present, but the same is valid for Edge, Adam and Larry.

May be the biggest mistake was to lead the album with the three big one (Eno, Lillywhite & Lanois) - too many cooks spoil the broth... This album is theirs, not U2 as we know them.

Its is waste of money and time. It is a bullshit. What a shame!

audio-music dot org



A rock & roll open secret: U2 care very much about what other people say about them. Ever since they hit the big time in 1987 with The Joshua Tree, every album is a response to the last — rather, a response to the response, a way to correct the mistakes of the last album: Achtung Baby erased the roots rock experiment Rattle and Hum, All That You Can't Leave Behind straightened out the fumbling Pop, and 2009's No Line on the Horizon is a riposte to the suggestion they played it too safe on 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. After recording two new cuts with Rick Rubin for the '06 compilation U218 and flirting with will.i.am, U2 reunited with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (here billed as "Danny" for some reason), who not only produced The Joshua Tree but pointed the group toward aural architecture on The Unforgettable Fire. Much like All That You Can't and Atomic Bomb, which were largely recorded with their first producer, Steve Lillywhite, this is a return to the familiar for U2, but where their Lillywhite LPs are characterized by muscle, the Eno/Lanois records are where the band take risks, and so it is here that U2 attempts to recapture that spacy, mysterious atmosphere of The Unforgettable Fire and then take it further. Contrary to the suggestion of the clanking, sputtering first single "Get on Your Boots" — its riffs and "Pump It Up" chant sounding like a cheap mashup stitched together in GarageBand — this isn't a garish, gaudy electro-dalliance in the vein of Pop. Apart from a stilted middle section — "Boots," the hamfisted white-boy funk "Stand Up Comedy," and the not-nearly-as-bad-as-its-title anthem "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"; tellingly, the only three songs here to not bear co-writing credits from Eno and Lanois — No Line on the Horizon is all austere grey tones and midtempo meditation. It's a record that yearns to be intimate but U2 don't do intimate, they only do majestic, or as Bono sings on one of the albums best tracks, they do "Magnificent." Here, as on "No Line on the Horizon" and "Breathe," U2 strike that unmistakable blend of soaring, widescreen sonics and unflinching openhearted emotion that's been their trademark, turning the intimate into something hauntingly universal. These songs resonate deeper and longer than anything on Atomic Bomb, their grandeur almost seeming effortless. It's the rest of the record that illustrates how difficult it is to sound so magnificent. With the exception of that strained middle triptych, the rest of the album is in the vein of "No Line on the Horizon", "Magnificent" and "Breathe," only quieter and unfocused, with its ideas drifting instead of gelling. Too often, the album whispers in a murmur so quiet it's quite easy to ignore — "White as Snow," an adaptation of a traditional folk tune, and "Cedars of Lebanon," its verses not much more than a recitation, simmer so slowly they seem to evaporate — but at least these poorly defined subtleties sustain the hazily melancholy mood of No Line on the Horizon. When U2, Eno, and Lanois push too hard — the ill-begotten techno-speak overload of "Unknown Caller," the sound sculpture of "Fez-Being Born" — the ideas collapse like a pyramid of cards, the confusion amplifying the aimless stretches of the album, turning it into a murky muddle. Upon first listen, No Line on the Horizon seems as if it would be a classic grower, an album that makes sense with repeated spins, but that repetition only makes the album more elusive, revealing not that U2 went into the studio with a dense, complicated blueprint, but rather, they had no plan at all.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



Wasser so weit das Auge reicht und am Horizont lediglich die zarte Andeutung einer Wolkenbank: Das zeigt die Schwarzweiß-Fotografie des japanischen Fotokünstlers Hiroshi Sugimoto auf dem Cover des neuen Albums von U2. No Line Behind The Horizon lautet der Titel, dessen rätselhafte Zweideutigkeit man leicht überlesen könnte, in Anbetracht der geheimnisvollen Faszination, die von der ruhigen Wasserfläche ausgeht, übrigens der Bodensee. Doch wie steht es mit den 11 neuen Songs, auf die Fans vier Jahre lang seit Erscheinen des letzten U2-Studioalbums How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb warten mussten? Wie beim letzten Mal sind Brian Eno und Daniel Lanois mit von der Partie. Einst als Interpreten ihrer eigenen Projekte gefeierte Vorbild für Musikergenerationen, prägten sie später auch als Produzenten maßgeblich das musikalische Erscheinungsbild von Bands und Künstlern wie Coldplay, Bob Dylan und eben auch U2. Wenige Takte des Openers “No Line Behind The Horizon“ genügen, um sich von dieser Qualität zu überzeugen. Spätestens bei Bonos charakteristischem Oh oh oh, oh, oh, oh, oh-Gesang in der vierten Songzeile darf sich der U2-Hörer wieder vollend zurück daheim fühlen. Die musikalischen Wurzeln dieses Album liegen zweifellos in The Joshua Tree von 1987 und dem Album Original Soundtracks I, entstanden 1995 unter der Ägide Brian Enos und dem Bandnamen Passengers. An letztere Scheibe kann vor allem der Song “Moment Of Surrender“ anknüpfen, aufgrund seines ambienthaften Schwebens des fahlen Orgelsounds und einem mehr als laszivem Schlagzeugs. No Line Behind The Horizon liefert ein gigantisches Déjà-Vu. Irgendwo hat man das alles schon einmal gehört. Doch wo nur? “Unknown Caller“ etwa trägt Gitarrensounds in sich, die stark an Brian Enos legendäre Alben Music For Films oder Apollo erinnern, auf dem übrigens seinerzeit neben Roger und Brian Eno auch Daniel Lanois mitspielte. No Line Behind The Horizon bietet tatsächlich nichts wirklich Neues, dafür aber Altbekanntes aus dem Eno-Lanois Baukasten in gewohnt gut gemachter Manier. Warum auch nicht? Dass sämtliche der beteiligten Herren in Jahren intensiver Arbeit mittlerweile Kultstatus erreicht haben und gar nicht anders können als sich zuweilen selbst zu zitieren, kann man ihnen unmöglich ankreiden. Außerdem erzählen Menschen mit zunehmendem Alter Dinge gerne oft doppelt, ohne es zu merken. (Und wenn doch, dann ist es ihnen meistens auch egal.) Das geht völlig in Ordnung solange dabei Songs herauskommen wie “Magnificent“, in dem gekonnt die 70er Jahre in Form des Gitarren-Synthesizer-Riffs aus “Speed Of Life“ von David Bowies Album Low anklingen, ohne als Imitation zu wirken. Fazit: Vergliche man No Line Behind The Horizon mit einer Tüte hochwertigsten Orangensafts, dürfte das Album folgenden Aufdruck in leicht abgewandelter Form völlig zu Recht tragen: “100% U2“

Andreas Schultz - Amazon.de



Marx's dictum about history held that its repetitions degenerate from tragedy to farce. Apparently no one told Bono and company, whose phoenix-like rebirth since 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind has been heavily indebted to innovative sonic reproductions of the band's back catalog. Indeed, like seasoned jazz performers, U2 have opted to trade headlong exploration for refinement of technique, and there's nothing farcical about it. Even an album like No Line On the Horizon, which owes its more searching sound to the itchy period that began with 1991's Achtung Baby carries itself with a maturity and, yes, world-weariness that speaks to experience, not repetition. Much as Achtung fed off the energy of post-wall Berlin, No Line draws inspiration from Fez, Morocco, with its mix of arid desert vista and teeming, chintzy souk. "Magnificent," with its synths echoing a Cairo soundtrack orchestra, and "Moment of Surrender," whose looped percussive hiccups recall Gnawa trance music, seem particularly indebted to North African aural architecture. This richness comes courtesy of classic collaborators Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who make a peace with the kicky garage-rock ("Get on Your Boots") and the more spacious vibes of '80s U2. (Steve Lillywhite, credited with additional production, completes the Achtung reunion - but where's Flood?) The result is simultaneously new and vintage as a pair of factory-distressed blue jeans.

Mark Schwartz - Barnes & Noble



...No Line on the Horizon, [is] U2's first album in nearly five years and their best, in its textural exploration and tenacious melodic grip, since 1991's Achtung Baby.

Rolling Stone



Es ist ein schwieriges Unterfangen, zu erklären, warum man eine U2-Platte gut findet, obwohl man sie dann doch nur zehn Mal hört und ins Regal stellt. So gings mir mit "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb", das ich 2004 zu allem Überfluss auch noch in die Nähe des U2-Überalbums "Achtung Baby" rückte. So weit konnte es kommen, weil die Platte im Rückblick einfach um Längen besser geriet als die bloße Stadionrock-Rückbesinnung "All That You Can't Leave Behind" (2000) und kein Mensch damals ahnen konnte, dass U2 irgendwann mal wieder so was wie Mut oder gar Risiko in Sachen Songwriting entwickeln würden.

Gestört hats niemanden, weil ja die U2-People, die das 80er-Manifest "The Joshua Tree" dem Ideen-Feuerwerk "Achtung Baby" vorziehen, eh klar in der Mehrheit sind und die Band für ihre letzten beiden Alben sage und schreibe 15 (!) Grammy-Auszeichnungen eingefahren hat.

All diese Fakten sprächen eigentlich dafür, den bereits überaus bequemen Treppenlift ins Rock'n'Roll-Nirwana noch etwas auszustaffieren. Stattdessen blicken U2 auf den Horizont des laut.de-Haussees, halten inne, wie man es im gesetzten Alter eben tut, um dann aus völlig irrationalen Motiven ins kalte Wasser zu springen.

"No Line On The Horizon" bringt sie tatsächlich wieder alle zusammen. Die Puristen, die Analysten, die vergraulten Zweifler und Missionarsmüden, ewige Joshua-Freunde und hartgesottene Baby-Liebhaber, Krautrock-Fans und Radio-Mitsummer.

Krautrock? Gut, wir wollen mal nicht übertreiben, zumal am selben Tag das neue Faust-Album erscheint. Aber ganz offenkundig hat ihr erstmals ins Songwriting miteinbezogene Langzeit-Producer Brian Eno mit den Jungs mächtig an der Atmosphäre geschraubt und teilweise gar krautig anmutende, schwer kontemplative Soundscapes gebastelt, die es so vorher bei U2 nicht gab ("Fez - Being Born", "White As Snow", "Cedars Of Lebanon").

Dass das frühe Treffen mit "dem weisen Rick Rubin" (Larry Mullen) keine Früchte davon trug, weil dessen Aufnahmeteam "nicht einfach nur rumhockt und wartet, dass was passiert", ist schon beim Auftakt scheißegal.

"No Line On The Horizon" begnügt sich mit zwei Akkorden, die Bono für den furiosesten Albumstart seit (sorry) "Achtung Baby" nutzt, bevor die Monotonie im Refrain sanft aufgebrochen wird und Edge in der zweiten Strophe mit viel Gefühl die Zügel lockert. Nicht zu vergessen bereits hier Enos fliegende Synthieteppiche, auf denen die Band sich es sogar erlauben kann, einen geilen "Oh-oh-oh-oh"-Part à la "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" einzustreuen.

Schon hier wird deutlich: Es regiert nicht mehr der Wille, unbedingt etwas beweisen zu müssen. Man ist vielmehr stolz auf die eigene Historie und nutzt nur das Beste aus sämtlichen Schaffensphasen als Ausgangsmaterial für neue Experimente. "The sweetest melody is the one you haven't heard", wie Bono an einer Stelle selbst feststellt.

Endlich hat man auch nicht mehr ständig das Gefühl, die Band diene dem Sänger vor allem als Vehikel seiner Aktivistenparolen. Schon in der Single fand sich die Zeile "I don't want to talk about the wars between the nations". In "Stand Up Comedy" parodiert er sich stellenweise selbst ("Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas"), was sehr passend mit dem ungestümen Funkrock zusammen geht.

Die Nummer klingt frappant nach einem Chili Peppers-Rip-Off, Jahrgang "By The Way", obwohl The Edge weiter hartnäckig behauptet, nicht zu Herrn Frusciante, sondern zu Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) aufzuschauen. Was man aber auch anderswo nicht merkt.

Anderswo erinnert die Gitarrenarbeit nämlich höchstens an The Edge und zwar an jenen von so ziemlich allen Jahrgängen. "Magnificent" ist einer dieser tricky Poprock-Songs, den U2-Fans lieben und U2-Hasser hassen. Mit der wirren Vorabsingle "Get On Your Boots", die viel suchte und wenig fand, hat das Album nicht mehr allzu viel gemein.

Zwar ist mir der Refrain der Halb-Ballade "Moment Of Surrender" und Edges komisches Mark Knopfler-Solo dann doch too much, aber Bonos Herzblut in den Strophen macht das fast schon wieder wett.

Außerdem folgt gleich danach "Unknown Caller", der beste Song der ersten Hälfte, mit riesigem "Joshua Tree"-Ausrufezeichen und einem epischem Edge. Das Krautrock-Gefasel vom Textanfang greift dann erst mit "Fez - Being Born" so richtig: Hätten es die Jungs nicht schon in Interviews verraten, würde man als Rezensent nun mutmaßen, dass die irische Millionärstruppe in der marokkanischen Stadt einfach mit den Instrumenten auf den Studio-Hof gegangen ist und unter freiem Himmel in den Tag hinein gespielt hat.

Dieses Gefühl der Entfesselung reicht von den ambienten Stücken "Fez - Being Born", dem grandiosen "White As Snow" über das klassische "Breathe" hin zum atemberaubend-minimalen "Cedars Of Lebanon", getragen von einer Art Spoken Word-Performance Bonos.

Was lernen wir daraus? Hinterm Lebenswerk gehts eben doch weiter. Und die Worte von Basser Adam klingen plötzlich gar nicht mehr abenteuerlich: "Ich mag eigentlich keine Akkordwechsel. Wenn ich nur eine Note rhythmisch anspiele, und genau dies wieder und wieder tue, für immer … das ist Glück. Das ist wahres Glück für mich".

© 1998-2009 LAUT AG



With coproducers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois explicitly included in the songwriting, it’s an effort to tinker and rough up and refine anew their music’s essence--with nobly sketchy results.

Spin Magazine



After spending the 1990s experimenting with electronic music and returning to arena-ready rock during the first few years of the 21st century, U2 stakes out territory somewhere between those two points on 2009's NO LINE ON THE HORIZON. Enlisting ...    Full Descriptionits go-to production trio of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Steve Lillywhite, the Irish quartet seems intent on crafting a quirkier companion piece to HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB, and they succeed with restless tracks such as "Get on Your Boots," which sounds like "Vertigo" hijacked by T. Rex, and "Stand Up Comedy," a wiry number that lets the Edge cut loose with barbed guitar lines. Some of most striking songs on HORIZON are the ones that venture farthest from U2's comfort zone, as on the surprisingly weighty title track, a tune that counterbalances its nearly industrial heft with a high-pitched keyboard melody, and, of course, Bono's soaring vocals. Although HORIZON is willfully less accessible than BOMB or ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND, it's no return to ZOOROPA-level obtuseness either, meaning that U2 fans will find plenty to admire here even if it doesn't hit them with the immediacy of the group's signature anthems.

CDUniverse.com



No Line on the Horizon is an eclectic and electrifying winner, one that speaks to the zeitgeist the way only U2 can and dare to do. [A-]

Jeff Jensen - Entertainment Weekly



No Line on the Horizon partakes of that romance by trying to expose its inner workings. It's risky to expose those delineations; as the band said long ago, it's like trying to throw your arms around the world. But the effort has its payoffs.

Ann Powers - Los Angeles Times



"I was born to sing for you/I didn't have a choice but to lift you up," Bono declares early on this album, in a song called "Magnificent." He does it in an oddly low register, a heated hush just above the shimmer of the Edge's guitar and the iron-horse roll of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. Bono is soon up in thin air with those familiar rodeo yells, on his way to the chorus, which ends with him just singing the word "magnificent," repeating it with relish, stretching the syllables.

But he does it not in self-congratulation, more like wonder and respect, as if in middle age, on his band's 11th studio album, he still can't believe his gift — and luck. Bono knows he was born with a good weapon for making the right kind of trouble: the clean gleam and rocket's arc of that voice. "It was one dull morning/I woke the world with bawling," he boasted in "Out of Control," written by Bono on his 18th birthday and issued on U2's Irish debut EP.

He is still singing about singing, all over No Line on the Horizon, U2's first album in nearly five years and their best, in its textural exploration and tenacious melodic grip, since 1991's Achtung Baby. "Shout for joy if you get the chance," Bono commands, in a text-message cadence and drill sergeant's bark, in "Unknown Caller." He leads by example in the ham-with-wry pop of "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" — "Listen for me/I'll be shouting/Shouting to the darkness" — then demands his piece of the din in the glam-fuzz shindig "Get on Your Boots": "Let me in the sound!...Meet me in the sound!" God, guilt, love, sin, terrorism and transcendence — Bono juggles them all here, with the usual cracks at his own hubris. ("Stand up to rock stars," he warns in "Stand Up Comedy." "Be careful of small men with big ideas.")

Bono also keeps coming back to the sheer power and pleasure of a long high note and the salvation you can feel in being heard. "I'm running down the road like loose electricity," he jabbers, with some of that nasal acid of the '66 Bob Dylan, through the hard-rock clatter of "Breathe," "while the band in my head plays a striptease."

It is a strange thing to sing on a record that more often reveals itself in tempered gestures, at a measured pace. (The main exception, the outright frivolity of "Get on Your Boots," comes right in the middle, as if the band thought it needed some kind of zany halftime.) Most of the great — and biggest-selling — U2 albums have been confrontational successes: the dramatic entrance on 1980's Boy; the spiritual-pilgrim reach of 1987's The Joshua Tree; the electro-Weimar whirl of Achtung Baby; the return to basics on 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Produced by the now-standard trio of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, No Line on the Horizon is closer to the transitional risks — the Irish-gothic spell of 1984's The Unforgettable Fire, the techno-rock jet lag of 1993's Zooropa — but with a consistent persuasion in the guitar hooks, rhythms and vocal lines.

In "No Line on the Horizon," it is the combination of garage-organ drone, fat guitar distortion and Mullen's parade-ground drumming, the last so sharp and hard all the way through that it's difficult to tell how much is him and how much is looping (that is a compliment). The Edge takes one of his few extended guitar solos at the end of "Unknown Caller," a straightforward, elegiac break with a worn, notched edge to his treble tone. "White as Snow" is mostly alpine quiet — guitar, keyboard, Bono and harmonies, like the Doors' "The Crystal Ship" crossed with an Appalachian ballad. "Cedars of Lebanon" ends the album much as "The Wanderer" did on Zooropa, a triumph of bare minimums (this time it's Bono going in circles, through wreckage, instead of Johnny Cash, who sang "The Wanderer") with limpid guitar and electronics suggesting a Jimi Hendrix love song, had he lived into the digital age.

"Fez — Being Born" is the least linear song on this album (no small achievement), a highway ride in flashback images dotted with Bono's wordless yelps and the descending ring of the Edge's guitar. The last lines actually tell you plenty about U2's songwriting priorities: "Head first, then foot/Then heart sets sail." The big irony: Their singer is one of the most insecure frontmen in the business. Bono knows exactly what a lot of you think of his social activism and flamboyant freelance diplomacy. But the flip side of that bravado, in "I'll Go Crazy..." — "The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear" — is a running doubt in Bono's lyrics, that he always goes too far ("Stand Up Comedy") and will never be as good as his ideals. The rising-falling effect of the harmony voices around Bono in the long space-walk "Moment of Surrender" is a perfect picture of where he really wants to be, when he gets to the line about "vision over visibility."

And he's sure he'll never get there on his own. "We are people borne of sound/The songs are in our eyes/Gonna wear them like a crown," Bono crows, next to the Edge's fevered-staccato guitar, near the end of "Breathe" — a grateful description of what it's like to be in a great rock & roll band, specifically this one. Bono knows he was born with a voice. He also knows that without Mullen, Clayton and the Edge, he'd be just another big mouth.

DAVID FRICKE (Feb 20, 2009)
Rolling Stone
 

 L y r i c s

No Line On The Horizon

I know a girl who’s like a sea
I watch her changing every day for me
Oh yeah, oh

One day she’s still, the next she swells
You can hear the universe in her sea shells
Oh yeah, oh

No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

I know a girl with a hole in her heart
She said infinity’s a great place to start
Oh

“Time is irrelevant, it’s not linear”
Then she put her tongue in my ear
Oh, oh

No, no line on the horizon
No, no line
No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

The songs in your head are now on my mind
You put me on pause
I try to rewind, love, and replay

Every night I have the same dream
I’m hatching some plot, scheming some scheme
Oh yeah
Oh

I’m a traffic cop, Rue du Marais
The sirens are wailing
But it’s me that wants to get away
Oh

No line on the horizon
No, no line
No, no line on the horizon
No, no line


Magnificent

Magnificent
Magnificent

I was born
I was born to be with you
In this space and time
After that and ever after I haven't had a clue
Only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

I was born
I was born to sing for you
I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice
From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise…

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love unites our hearts

Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent
Magnificent


Moment of Surrender

I tied myself with wire
To let the horses run free
Playing with the fire
Until the fire played with me

The stone was semi precious
We were barely conscious
Two souls too smart to be
In the realm of certainty
Even on our wedding day

We set ourselves on fire
A girl could not deny her
Its not if I believe in love
If love believes in me
Oh believe in me

At the moment of surrender
I'm falling to my knees
I did not notice the passers by
And they did not notice me

I’ve been in every black hole
At the alter of a Dark star
My body s now begging
Though it’s begging to get back
Begging to get back
To my heart
To the rhythm of my soul
To the rhythm of my consciousness
To the rhythm of yes
To be released from control

I was punching in the numbers at the ATM machine
I could see in the reflection
A face staring back at me
At the moment of surrender
A vision of a visibility
I did notice the passers by
And they did not notice me

I was speeding off the subway
Through the stations of the cross
Every eye looking every other way
Counting down till the pain will stop

At the moment of surrender
A vision of a visibility
I did not notice the passers by
And they did not notice me


Unknown Caller

Sunshine, sunshine
Sunshine, sunshine
Oh, oh
Oh, oh
I was lost between the midnight and the dawning
In a place of no consequence or company
3:33 when the numbers fell off the clock face
Speed dialing with no signal at all
Go, shout it out, rise up
Oh, oh
Escape yourself, and gravity
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
Shush now
Oh, oh
Force quit and move to trash
I was right there at the top of the bottom
On the edge of the known universe where I wanted to be
I had driven to the scene of the accident
And I sat there waiting for me
Restart and re-boot yourself
You´re free to go
Oh, oh
Shout for joy if you get the chance
Password, you enter here, right now
Oh, oh
You know your name so punch it in
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
Shush now
Oh, oh
They don't move or say a thing


I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight

She's a rainbow and she loves the peaceful life
Knows I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight

There's a part of me in chaos that's quiet
And there's a part of you that wants me to riot
Everybody needs to cry or needs to spit
Every sweet-tooth needs just a little hit
Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot
How can you stand next to the truth and not see it?
Change of heart comes slow..

It's not a hill it's a mountain
As you start out the climb
Do you believe me or are you doubtin?
We're gonna make it all the way to the light
But I know I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight

Every generation gets a chance to change the world
Divination that will listen to your boys and girls
Is the sweetest melody the one we haven't heard?
Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear?
The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear
But change of heart comes slow...

It's not a hill it's a mountain
As you start out the climb
Listen for me I've been shoutin
But we're gonna make it all the way to the light
But I know I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight

Baby, baby, baby, I know I'm not alone
Baby, baby, baby, I know I'm not alone
Ha, ha, ha

It's not a hill it's a mountain
Listen for me I've been shouting
Let's shout until the darkness, squeeze out sparks of light
You know we'll go crazy
You know we'll go crazy
You know we'll go crazy, if we don't go crazy tonight


Get On Your Boots

The future needs a big kiss
Winds blows with a twist
Never seen a moon like this
Can you see it too?

Night is falling everywhere
Rockets at the fun fair
Satan loves a bomb scare
But he won’t scare you

Hey, sexy boots
Get on your boots, yeah

You free me from the dark dream
Candy floss ice cream
All our kids are screaming
But the ghosts aren’t real

Here’s where we gotta be
Love and community
Laughter is eternity
If joy is real

You don’t know how beautiful
You don’t know how beautiful you are
You don’t know, and you don’t get it, do you?
You don’t know how beautiful you are

That’s someone’s stuff they’re blowing up
We’re into growing up
Women of the future
Hold the big revelations

I've got a submarine
You've got gasoline
I don’t want to talk about wars between nations

Not right now

Hey sexy boots…
Get on your boots, yeah
Not right now
Bossy boots

You don’t know how beautiful
You don’t know how beautiful you are
You don’t know, and you don’t get it, do you?
You don’t know how beautiful you are

Hey sexy boots
I don’t want to talk about the wars between the nations
Sexy boots, yeah

Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Meet me in the sound

Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound, now
God, I’m going down
I don’t wanna drown now
Meet me in the sound

Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Meet me in the sound

Get on your boots
Get on your boots
Get on your boots
Yeah hey hey


Stand Up Comedy

Love love love love love
Love love love love love

I got to stand up and take a step
You and I have been asleep for hours
I got to stand up
The wire is stretched
In between our two towers
Stand up in this dizzy world
Where a lovesick eye can steal the view
I’m gonna fall down if I can’t stand up
For your love

Love love love love love

Stand up, this is comedy
The DNA lotto may have left you smart
But can you stand up to beauty
Dictator of the heart
I can stand up for hope, faith, love
But while I’m getting over certainty
Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady

Oh, oh
Out from under your beds
C’mon, ye people
Stand up for your love

Love love love love love
Love love love love love

I gotta stand up to ego but my ego’s not really the enemy
It’s like a small child crossing an eight lane highway
On a voyage of discovery

Stand up to rock stars
Napolean is in high heels
Josephine, be careful
Of small men with big ideas

Oh, oh
Out from under your beds
C’mon, ye people
Stand up for your love

Love love love love love
Love love love love love

God is love
And love is evolution’s very best day

Soul rockin’ people moving on
Soul rockin’ people on and on
C’mon, ye people
We’re made of stars
C’mon, ye people
Stand up then sit down for your love

Love love love love love
Love love love love love
Love love love love love
Love love love love love


Fez - Being Born

Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Let me in the sound

Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Let me in the sound, sound
Let me in the sound

Oh oh oh oh

Six o’clock
On the autoroute
Burning rubber, burning chrome
Bay of Cadiz and ferry home
Atlantic sea, cut glass
African sun at last

Oh oh oh oh

Lights flash past
Like memories
A speeding head, a speeding heart
I’m being born, a bleeding start
The engines roar, blood-curdling wail
Head first, then foot
Then heart sets sail


White As Snow

Where I came from there were no hills at all,
the land was flat, the highway straight and wide.
My brother and I would drive for hours
like we'd years instead of days,
our faces as pale as the dirty snow.

Once i knew there was a love divine
then came a time I thought it
knew me not.
Who can forgive forgiveness when forgiveness is not,
only the land as white as snow.

And the water, it was icy
as it washed over me
and the moon shined above me.

Now this dry ground it bears no fruit at all
only ? under a crescent moon.
The road refuses strangers,
the land, the seeds we sow
where might we find the land as white as snow.

As boys we would go hunting in the woods
to sleep the night shooting out the stars
now the voes of every passing stranger
every face we cannot know

For only a heart could be as white as snow,
for only a heart could be as white as snow.


Breathe

16th of June, nine-oh-five, door bell rings
Man at the door says if I want to stay alive a bit longer
There’s a few things I need you to know
Three

Coming from a long line of
Traveling sales people on my mother’s side
I wasn’t gonna buy just anyone’s cockatoo
So why would I invite a complete stranger into my home
Would you

These days are better than that
These days are better than that

Every day I die again, and again I’m reborn
Every day I have to find the courage
To walk out into the street
With arms out
Got a love you can’t defeat
Neither down nor out
There’s nothing you have that I need
I can breathe
Breathe now

16th of June, Chinese stocks are going up
And I’m coming down with some new Asian virus
Ju Ju man, Ju Ju man
Doc says you’re fine, or dying
Please
Nine-oh-nine, St. John Divine on the line, my pulse is fine
But I’m running down the road like loose electricity
While the band in my head plays a striptease

The roar that lies on the other side of silence
The forest fire that is fear so deny it

Walk out into the street
Sing your heart out
The people we meet
Will not be drowned out
There’s nothing you have that I need
I can breathe
Breathe now
Yeah, yeah

We are people borne of sound
The songs are in our eyes
Gonna wear them like a crown

Walk out, into the sunburst street
Sing your heart out, sing my heart out
I’ve found grace inside a sound
I found grace, it’s all that I found
And I can breathe
Breathe now


Cedars Of Lebanon

Yesterday I spent asleep
Woke up in my clothes in a dirty heap
Spent the night trying to make a deadline
Squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline

I have your face here in an old Polaroid
Tidying the children’s clothes and toys
You’re smiling back at me, I took the photo from the fridge
Can’t remember what then we did

I haven’t been with a woman, it feels like for years
Thought of you the whole time, your salty tears
This shitty world sometimes produces a rose
The scent of it lingers and then it just goes

Return the call to home

The worst of us are a long drawn out confession
The best of us are geniuses of compression
You say you’re not going to leave the truth alone
I’m here ‘cos I don’t want to go home

Child drinking dirty water from the river bank
Soldier brings oranges he got out from a tank
I’m waiting on the waiter, he’s taking a while to come
Watching the sun go down on Lebanon

Return the call to home

Now I’ve got a head like a lit cigarette
Unholy clouds reflecting in a minaret
You’re so high above me, higher than everyone
Where are you in the Cedars of Lebanon?

Choose your enemies carefully ‘cos they will define you
Make them interesting ‘cos in some ways they will mind you
They’re not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friends
 

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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