One of the songs most consistently played at Obama rallies has been U2’s “City of Blinding Lights,” which I believe is one of the best tracks from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The song captures Obama’s core message: a turning away from cynicism and irony back to authentic and hopeful engagement with the world. Here’s what I wrote about the song’s meaning when I first heard it in 2004:
This is a beautiful song with only one musical misstep, IMHO (the awkward bridge of “Time… time won’t leave me as I am…”). It takes the classic circular structure that I particularly love, starting with a three-line stanza beginning with “The more you see the less you know” and ending with a three-line stanza beginning with “The more you know the less you feel.”
The final message is classic U2 in both its religious and ecumenical thrust, reminding us that God loves us all, even the unfaithful. It’s also classic U2 in its earnestness, emerging from faith that love and reason will see us through troubled times.
Many of the reviews of this album dwelled on U2’s era of irony / self-awareness / self-indulgence (Achtung-Pop). If this song is indeed a paean to NYC, it’s also a word of encouragement and advice to not let self-awareness become self-doubt, as these critical lines tell: “Don’t look before you laugh / Look ugly in a photograph.” These words are painful, evocative of a teenager whose sudden realization of identity leads her to mug for the camera to avoid the reality of her true beauty. If, like that girl we all know, NYC is waking up to itself, it needs the reassurance that “Oh you look so beautiful tonight.” Audaciously, unashamedly, U2 offers it that assurance.
Those same lyrics also evoke — and exorcise — U2’s era of pretentious facadism. In confessing “All that you can’t leave behind,” U2 acknowledged that the act of remaking yourself is both impossible and inherently self-indulgent. Personally I feel like they are coming to peace with the realization, “The more you know / The less you feel.”
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After seeing the replay of the “we Are One” concert, I was moved to find the lyrics to “The City of Blinding Lights”. I didn’t know of the song’s use at Obama rallies or its connection to NYC. I am moved by poetry, but not a poet. Thanks for sharing your insights. It meant all that much more.