U2 Lyrics

Use the links below to read the lyrics of each U2 album etc or go to the alphabetical lyric index to search for lyrics to a particular U2 song:

Boy October War Under a Blood Red Sky The Unforgettable Fire Wide Awake in America The Joshua Tree

The Joshua Tree Rattle and Hum Achtung Baby Zooropa Pop All That You Can't Leave Behind U2 Best of 1990-2000

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb U218 Singles No Line on the Horizon B sides A to G B sides H to P B sides Q to Z Miscellaneous others

Bono is a superb songwriter so there are plenty of good lyrics to choose from. Probably my all time fave line is from Running To Stand Still, which is found on The Joshua Tree. The line is:

"You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice"

I think that's sheer poetry. Several U2 songs use the recurring theme of blindness. My good friend Bronwyn (aka Brono) got me thinking about this recently so I was inspired to look at various references to blindness in U2 songs because of her. One of the earliest examples can be found on Boy:

"I was looking at myself
I was blind I could not see"
- I Will Follow

October continues on that theme and explores it in a spiritual context, for example:

"No one, no one is blinder
Than he who will not see
No-one, no-one is blinder than me"
- I Threw a Brick Through a Window

and

"Open up, open up to the lamb of God
To the love of he who made the blind to see"
- Tomorrow

Bono may well have been inspired by the words to 'Amazing Grace' by John Newton. This old hymn obviously means a lot to him because many times he has added a few lines from it to live performances of 'Electric Co':

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see

Ten years after these early spiritual songs, Love is Blindness appeared on Achtung Baby. Gone were the religious undertones, to be replaced by much darker words of despair:

"Love is blindness - I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me?
Oh, my heart - love is blindness"
- Love is Blindness

The Pop album does something similar with lines such as "Not the only one who's happy to go blind" (Staring at the Sun) and "It's the blind leading the blonde" (If God Will Send His Angels). IGWSHA seems to suggest that the people who are blind to what's important are leading those who are unfairly regarded as less intelligent to do the unimportant. (Thanks to Brono for that interpretation).