John Maddens Lunchbox said:
#2 - One (1991) Highest- 1 Lowest- 12 Achtung Baby
V- 6/218 - enormous emotional chameleon. Changes colors from red to blue to purple depending on the lens of betrayal, dishonesty, disappointment, or despair you view the song through. Bone-deep sadness, dark melancholy, & immense regret. “We’re 1, but we’re not the same,” a deep truth, before moving on to, “We get to carry each other.” The latter lyric being essential to the song in disparate ways: “It’s a reminder that we have no choice.....'Get to’ is the key,” Edge said, “‘Got to’ would be too obvious. ‘Get to’ suggests it is our privilege to carry 1 another.”
Bono's voice is full of deep heartache, & fairly reverberates w pain & regret. Taking all of the above into account, it is astonishing that people think this is a good song to play at their weddings.
Takes up where All I want is you left off from R&H. Musically not lyrically. it joins a long list of songs that have been misunderstood lyrically. Imagine getting married to this & then understanding the lyrics
Songfact:
In a catalog devoted to exploring romantic love, spiritual faith & social justice, no single U2 song unites all these themes as potently as this supreme soul ballad. “It’s [about] coming together, but not the old hippie idea of ‘Let’s all live together,'” Bono said. “It is, in fact, the opposite. It’s saying, ‘We are 1, but we’re not the same’ … [and] we have to get along together in this world if it is to survive.”
By the end of their first all-conquering decade in music, U2 may have been the biggest band in the world, but all was not well. Reconvening to record the follow-up to the bloated misstep R&H at the Bowie-haunted Hansa Studios in Berlin in October 1990 (the month Germany officially reunited), the band found themselves stalked by the dreaded cliché – musical differences. Bono & Edge wanted to experiment w dance elements, while Clayton & Mullen wanted to return to the old sound, & they disagreed over the quality of their new material.
However, they got over it when a song descended on them in a jam session to uncover their old chemistry & reunite them. The song itself came together rather quickly after the Edge took the chords from another track the band had been working on, “Sick Puppy,” & played them on an acoustic guitar. The rest of the band joined in, & within 15 minutes the basic structure of “One” was there. It underwent further transformation when producer Brian Eno persuaded them to deconstruct it; Daniel Lanois & Edge removed the acoustic parts & instead added more aggressive guitar to undermine the “too beautiful” overall sound. They achieved their goal, w Edge wrapping the song in layers for its intro before adding a heartrending soundscape of bends from Daniel Lanois & a series of modulated licks, forever building to the song’s anthemic outro figure. “Sick Puppy” also went on to form the backbone of “Mysterious Ways.”
The birth of ONE in Hansa Studios, Berlin (i've posted this before when we ranked Mysterious Ways)
Bono has said the lyrics "just fell out of the sky, a gift"; the concept was inspired by a note Bono sent to the Dalai Lama declining to attend a festival called Oneness....the note read, "One - but not the same". “‘One,’ of course, is about the band.” The music, born of paired Edge guitar riffs, added tension to the gentle beauty. The result is an immaculate balance of the intimate & anthemic. The understated rhythm section & Edge’s rainbow hues map Bono’s journey from the near-whispered opening (“Is it getting better?”), to the bridge where he declaims “love” in a cracked holler, to the falsetto outro, all pain & fierce hope.
“One” reflects many geopolitical rifts – it was recorded in Germany, as the Cold War was coming to an end, & mixed in Ireland. Bono later recalled “going around Europe when stuff was going on in Bosnia, sometimes 300 miles from where we were playing.”
Proceeds from the single were donated to AIDS research, which was stated on the liner notes of the single. Also printed on the notes was this statement: "The image on the single's cover is a photograph by the American artist David Wojnarowicz, depicting how Indians hunted buffalo by causing them to run off cliffs. Wojnarowicz identifies himself & ourselves w the buffalo, pushed into the unknown by forces we cannot control or even understand. Wojnarowicz is an activist artist & writer whose work has created controversy recently through its uncompromising depiction of the artist's homosexuality, his infection by the H.I.V. virus & the political crisis surrounding AIDS."
(Wojnarowicz himself died a few months after the release of “One” as a result of AIDS-related complications, at the age of 37.)
The message of acceptance was welcomed by members of the gay community, many of whom interpreted it as a son telling a father he is dying of AIDS.
Singers from Johnny Cash to Mary J. Blige have covered it. Axl Rose called it “1 of the greatest songs that’s ever been written,” adding that, when he 1st heard it, “I just broke down crying.”
In 1993, Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen paired up w Michael Stipe & Mike Mills from R.E.M & performed this at the "MTV Rock n Roll Inaugural Ball" for Bill Clinton. The impromptu group became known as "Automatic Baby," a combination of album titles Automatic For The People & AB.
Link
Apart from U2's original #10 placing, One has charted on 3 other occasions on the Billboard Hot 100 :
2006 - Mary J. Blige & U2 (#86)
Link This benefited victims of hurricane Katrina & went on her album Reminisce.
2009 - Adam Lambert (#82)
Studio version 4:08 American Idol performance 1:58
2010 - Glee Cast (#60)
This was voted best single in the 1992 Rolling Stone reader's poll. U2 also won for best album, band, & comeback of the yr. In 2003, it was voted the best song ever by Q magazine.
In 2005, Bono got involved in the "One" campaign, which tried to convince the US government to give an additional 1% of its budget to help poor regions in Africa. On the Vertigo tour, fans who signed up had their names displayed on video screens when U2 played this.
In 2006, Bank of America merged w MBNA.....and BoA held a corporate conference where Ethan Chandler, who managed a NY branch,
performed a new version of this song celebrating the merger. 
Sample lyric: "And we've got Bank One on the run. What's in your wallet? It's not Capital One." Thankfully, someone leaked the video & it ended up on YouTube, where you can see it in all its glory. (in response, Universal Music Group, the copyright owner of the song, posted a cease & desist letter)
Bono explained the meaning of this song: "It's a father-and-son story. I tried to write about someone I knew who was coming out & was afraid to tell his father. It's a religious father & son... I have a lot of gay friends, & I've seen them screwed up from unloving family situations, which just are completely anti-Christian. If we know anything about God, it's that God is love. That's part of the song. And then it's also about people struggling to be together, & how difficult it is to stay together in this world, whether you're in a band or a relationship."
Anyone thinking of using this at their wedding might want to reconsider. Bono: "'One' is not about oneness, it's about difference," I'm still disappointed when people hear the chorus line as 'we've got to' rather than 'we get to carry each other.' Because it is resigned, really. It's not: 'Come on everybody, let's vault over the wall.' Like it or not, the only way out of here is if I give you a leg up the wall & you pull me after you. There's something very unromantic about that. The song is a bit twisted, which is why I could never figure out why people want it at their weddings. I have certainly met a hundred people who've had it at their weddings. I tell them, 'Are you mad? It's about splitting up!'"
Edge: "The lyric was the 1st in a new, more intimate style. It's 2 ideas, essentially. On 1 level it's a bitter, twisted, vitriolic conversation between 2 people who've been through some nasty, heavy stuff: 'We hurt each other, then we do it again.' But on another level there's the idea that 'we get to carry each other.' 'Get to' is the key. 'Got to' would be too obvious. 'Get to' suggests it is our privilege to carry one another. It puts everything in perspective & introduces the idea of grace. Still, I wouldn't have played it at any wedding of mine."
This was featured in the trailer for the 2000 Nicolas Cage movie The Family Man. It was not used in the movie itself.
Recording: Following the song's initial breakthrough in Berlin, tapes of the recording sessions were delivered to assisting producer Brian Eno to gather his input. Eno spent extended periods of time away from the sessions before visiting to review songs, & he believed that distancing himself from the work allowed him to provide the band w a fresh perspective on their material each time he rejoined them. The band were rather anxious about the quality of their material, but when Eno arrived in Berlin, they were surprised to hear that he liked most of the tapes. However, as Bono recalls, Eno said,
"There's just 1 song I really despise, and that's 'One'." Eno felt that they needed to deconstruct the song.
The band returned to Dublin & continued to work on the song there, adding various overdubs, but not finding a mix they were satisfied with. Edge thought that they had the foundation for the song, but that it needed "foreground". Eno interceded, explaining to the group that "One" was among the sessions' tracks in which "
The song has gone, whatever it is you liked about this song is not there anymore", & that the track had "disappeared under layers of overdubs". He created his own mix, & wanted the band to remove the melancholy elements of the song & persuaded them to remove the acoustic guitar from the song. He also worked w Lanois & Edge to "undermine the 'too beautiful' feeling", which is why they added the "crying guitar parts that have an aggression to them".
Baby One - U2's early demo version of One.........notice the prominent Acoustic guitar that was modified for the final studio version
The final mix was completed at Windmill Lane Studios in Sept 1991 on the last night of the album's recording sessions, when some last minute additions were made. Bono did not like a line in the vocals & spent most of the day re-recording it. Later, after the song's mix had just been completed by the production team,
Edge came up w a guitar part he wanted to add to the song's end near the lyric "Love is a temple". After convincing the production team to allow the addition, Edge played the part once & had it mixed in 10 minutes later.
Release: The single included the album version of “One” as the A-side, w “Lady W the Spinning Head (UV1)” as the B-side. This was an early version of the song “Ultraviolet” (thus the notation “UV1”)
Charts-peaked at: UK # 7 US: #10 (Alt#1) Canada: #1 IRE: #1
In 2006, the re-released song One w Mary J Blige charted: UK # 2 US #86
Lyrics:
"You ask me to enter.............But then you make me crawl"
And I can't be holding on..... To what you got When all you got is hurt
Video:
See my other post but here's even more info:
3 different videos were made, each interpreting the song differently. The first, directed by Mark Pellington, shows a buffalo running in a field. The second, which was mostly seen in Europe, featured U2 in drag. The third, shown mostly in the US, is built around Bono reflecting over a cigarette.
Director & photographer Anton Corbijn was at the helm for the video that featured the band in drag: "
I had been working w U2 as a photographer for 10 yrs at this stage & we'd had our ups & downs. I'd done one video for them in 1984 for 'Pride.' It was a disaster & no one ever saw it. It took them 8 yrs to give me another chance. I really wanted to put a lot of effort into it to prove myself to them as a director. I even hand-painted the cars that appear in the video myself. I themed the whole thing around the notion of 'one' although I don't think that's what Bono was actually singing about. That's why I filmed it in Berlin because the wall had just come down. And I filmed the band performing in a circle like a single unit. I showed Bono's dad at 1 end of a seesaw to suggest that on your own you are not always balanced. I liked Bono's father very much but they had a very complex relationship.
I think it meant a lot for them to appear together. These were all my own ideas but U2 are very much a band who like to meet up & talk about things.
There are always a lot of meetings w them! But they cleared all the ideas, including the 1 about them appearing in drag. Later though, they decided that some of the proceeds from the single would go to Aids charities. They became nervous that the drag element in the video might link Aids to the homosexual community in a negative way. So they dropped the video & got someone else to film something.
It was so painful for me at the time. They replaced it w a video of Bono in a bar surrounded by models, which I particularly didn't like. But once the song had died in the charts a few months later they got MTV to start running my video instead. That's why I like working w U2: they have stayed very loyal to me, which is rare in music."
Bono's father, Robert Hewson, appeared in the song's video. He later complained to his son that he hadn't been paid.
Live Versions / Remixes:
One - live from Sydney ZooTV tour 1993
One - Bono + Edge + Brian Eno - Modena, Italy w Orchestra 1995
One - live from Chicago 2005 Vertigo tour
One - live from the 2009 - 360 Tour
One - live from the 2017 JT Anniv Tour
One - Songs of Acoustic and Orchestral Sonido 2018
When Rolling Stone ranked their Top50 U2 songs: 1
Been played live 821 times
) but in this car it’s top-25 for sure.
