Listen to the lyrics! ... Bono tries to get
his message across
Photograph: Chad Rachman/AP
One of the more curious 'Best of' polls of recent months was revealed today (or yesterday to those prepared to devote their Easter Monday to watching VH1): the nation's favourite lyric. Top of the pile in a list made up of individually memorable lines nominated by leading musicians was U2's One.
What people like to remember with U2, it seems, is the line, "One life, with each other/ Sisters, brothers", an apparently upbeat soundbite from what is otherwise a rather claustrophobic tune. Although the meaning of the song is somewhat vague, in traditional rock lyric vein, it seems difficult not to understand it as being about a couple who are doing each other no good. ("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 ... ")
Greeting the result, Girls Aloud manager Louis Walsh didn't appear to have paid much attention to the rest of the words when he said, "One is a timeless classic song. I think the lyrics are just fantastic - one life - because everybody only has one life."
This rather selective way of listening to songs is not uncommon, and One is quite frequently picked to be played as the first dance at wedding receptions. So, too, of course, is Every Breath You Take by the Police, Sting's sweet and tender ballad about murderously obsessive love (a line from which ranked 20th in the nation's favourites).
An even more spectacular misappropriation of a song lyric was Ronald Reagan's endorsement of "the message of hope" in Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. The president was not alone in failing to listen past the thunderously affirmative delivery of the title phrase (helped along by the Boss' marketing, which made very heavy use of the national flag), but you would have thought at least one adviser might have spotted the message of hope getting rather occluded in verses like: "Born down in a dead man's town/ The first kick I took was when I hit the ground/ You end up like a dog that's been beat too much".
Perhaps we should blame the wishy-washy abstraction of so many pop lyrics, which have encouraged us to switch off during the verses, but it does seem like all you need is one phrase that sounds vaguely upbeat in a song, and large numbers of listeners simply won't notice that the chirpy soundbite they've been crooning in the shower is actually warning of impending apocalypse.
What would you folks vote for as Britain's most misunderstood lyric?
