Like a Song: Lemon

@U2, August 17, 2008

Ian Ryan

[Ed. note: This is the 24th in a series of personal essays by the @U2 staff about songs and/or albums that have had great meaning or impact in our lives.]

Christmas, 1993. I got my first Super Nintendo. I got Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past with it and spent the rest of Christmas break playing it non-stop. I also got a CD with a purple cover with a title that also started with a "Z" that I listened to a bit but didn't give anywhere near as much attention to as Zelda. The Christmas before, I'd received Achtung Baby, mainly because I thought "The Fly" and "Even Better Than the Real Thing" were pretty cool songs. They didn't rock my world, but I liked them. Zooropa was similar. I liked "Numb" and "Lemon," so my parents got me the follow-up album to Achtung Baby.

After the break was over, boy, was there a reversal. I actually took the time to sit down and listen to the songs, really pay attention in a way I hadn't before. From that day to the minute I write this sentence, I have been convinced that "Lemon" is the most perfect example of the genius that is U2. There has been no other song by any artist ever that so consistently takes my breath away. Zooropa is not generally considered U2's best album but, based on lyrical content and musical concepts, I feel it is certainly their most intelligent album, and "Lemon" is its centerpiece.

"Lemon" is a song as massive and epic as any U2 has done, but throw in a falsetto and a disco beat and people start treating it like it's cotton candy. Musically, it's as expansive and enveloping as "Where the Streets Have No Name" or "Beautiful Day." It tackles ideas as personal as anything Bono has touched on in "I Will Follow" or "Mofo" and as academic as "Crumbs From Your Table" or "Mothers of the Disappeared." However, the band wears matching blue uniforms and Bono tosses on some make-up and horns and it becomes all good times and fun. That's what I love about it. It's got two ideas that would seemingly be at odds but which instead complement each other perfectly.

At the time, I was still in middle school, so I didn't quite grasp just how interesting Edge's echoing guitars were, how funky Adam's bass lines sounded, just what Bono had achieved with his lyrics, or how freakin' weird it was at the time to hear Larry playing disco. That didn't stop the song from opening up my ears to what music was capable of. My parents, being ex-semi-hippies, had raised me on a steady diet of Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Wonderful melodies and voices, introspective lyrics, but lacking in a certain spirit. "Lemon" was just the kick in the ass I needed.

Bono's falsetto is meant to invoke the idea of a little boy. He's said that's what he uses his falsetto for sometimes, and it's never been more true than with "Lemon." Here's the lost, lonely child who is given a movie of his dead mother at a wedding, moving through the guests in a lemon-colored dress. This intensely personal, immediate experience gets contrasted and then combined with an analytical look at the technology that lets it happen. The falsetto talks about how "she'll make you whisper and moan," but not in a sexual fashion. It's the quiet tones of a child who has lost the most lovely person in his life but still needs to talk to her. It talks about how "you're gonna meet her there," about how he's "swimming out to her," and how she's "your destination" and "imagination." He outright says, "she had heaven."

Then, following right behind, is the stern, unemotional chorus of the Edge and Brian Eno. Their lecturing, text-book voices calmly and clearly explain that all the technology that could be considered cold is, in fact, a gift. It allows people to watch themselves, to catch a moment of their time forever. People complain about how cold and isolated the technology of today has made people but how could something that allows a little boy who may be a man to see his mom again be so bad? The Edge/Eno choral voices eventually start to reflect the emotion of the boy. "She is the dreamer, she's imagination," they say. Nothing technical or mechanical about that. The technology does not have to be cold. It can be magic. The choral voices explain that man makes a car and then the boy's voice communicates that he needs to travel because "she's my destination." They tell him that there are roads to drive on when he says he has to get to her. They may look like melted sand and unnatural structures, but the modern inventions can get us to our destination. The banks fund the travel and the cathedrals keep the traveler centered.

They also repeat, over and over, one of the most pertinent lines of the whole song: "Midnight is where the day begins." That bit can get lost because it's set behind Bono’s falsetto and repeated so often. It's a rehash of the "it's always darkest before the dawn" concept, of course, but it works so much better with the idea of color that is touched on again and again in the song, even the title.

Time and again, though, the part that really reinforces for me just how much incredible craft has gone into this is when, in the bridge, the string-synths go from their minor key back to the major. All the concern of the start of the bridge gets washed away by Edge's rippling, submerged guitars and then the choral voices start reminding us that "midnight is where the day begins" while the child's voice repeats it as well. Then we go back into the minor key with the choral voices reminding us of what our technology is and what we do with it and the child's voice sounding like he's almost trying to convince himself. The flow from the tenderness to the knowledge to the frustration, all layered over such beautiful music ... to this day, it still takes my breath away and leaves me tense in the stomach.

So, that's what my middle-school mind was given with this song. Of course, I'm better at articulating it now but still, I got the gist. This song was like nothing I'd heard before. As punk had been for U2, "Lemon" and Zooropa were for me. They showed me just what music was capable of, how such amazing and unique noises and sounds could be combined with such poetic, brilliant lyrics and create something so much larger and more beautiful than the sum of the parts. I mean, seriously, if not for this specific song, I might have gotten into, I dunno, country ... or maybe Britney Spears. The potential horror, the potential horror.

I do feel I would be remiss if I didn't say a bit about the live version of this song. I can say unequivocally that there is no song by any artist that I want to see live more than "Lemon." Seeing the grandeur and energy of the song on the Zoo TV Sydney video gives me a craving like no other song. The flashing Technicolor lemons flashing over the screens, the lemonball karaoke, the blaring alarms at the start with Adam's rumbling bass warning you of what is coming, they all make such an astonishing visual and audio barrage that I literally can watch it again and again and again. And if they ever do decide to play it live again, I guarantee you I'll be the one screaming the loudest.

© @U2/Ryan, 2008.