John Maddens Lunchbox said:
#7 - With or Without You (1987) Highest- 4 Lowest- 38 The Joshua Tree
V-12/218 - slick side of U2, their ability to write a massive worldwide hit & make it sound like nothing they’d ever done before, yet still sound only like U2. They fool you w that opening: It kind of creeps in on little fog feet, quietly, Edge playing what Bono called “a beautiful haunting ghost of a guitar sound,” like if you could hear a shimmer. and then it all draws together & slinks out, like a black cat at midnight.
Comment - the song that launched them into the stratosphere. It is Just such a beautiful song. ANYONE can get this track, which is why it was so successful.
Songfact:
“It doesn’t sound like anything else of its time,” Edge said of the 1st single from TJT. “It’s not coming from an 80's mentality. It’s coming from somewhere completely different.” With its stark sound & low-key video, WOWY cut through the bloat & slickness of 80's rock (“It whispers its way into the world,” Bono said), giving U2 their 1st #1 hit in the U.S. & turning the band into reluctant pop stars. “You don’t imagine hearing it [on the radio],” Clayton said.
The song’s lyrics were sparked by heroes of the U.S. civil rights movement & the “new journalism” of the 1960s. Yet WOWY – rooted in a simple bass groove & an ethereal guitar that frames Bono’s yearning vocals – remains 1 of U2’s most universal songs to date, a meditation on the painful ambivalence of a love affair. Bono describes a tortured relationship that he can't escape. The lyric can be interpreted many ways; Bono explained that he wanted to write a love song that dealt w real issues.
Another song that came together in the studio while the band were harboring fears of creative drought, sonically speaking, With Or Without You was a great leap forward for U2.
It’s the 1st U2 song to feature Bono singing in a confessional lower register & Larry Mullen experimenting w an electronically enhanced drumkit; but the key ingredient was once again Edge, whose used a prototype distortion device called an "Infinite Guitar" to create the wail that
he’d just received. It added a haunting quality that elevated its sound created from the feedback.
The prototype Infinite Guitar was created by Edge’s friend Michael Brook, whom Edge worked w on the soundtrack for a 1986 film called The Captive. "Brook created the Infinite Guitar by replacing the pickup on a guitar with a magnetic device that vibrates the strings so you didn't have to use your right hand on the guitar. You just held a note w your left hand, & he had a little self-looping system built into the instrument. But as you went up higher on the guitar, the infinite sustain just kept going into the stratosphere." Over the yrs, the setup has given guitar tech Dallas Schoo several electric shocks.
Edge: "I was taking the infinite sustain out of the box & plugging it in to see what it did, & it started making that sound. I was really just testing the guitar to see what it could do. After 1 take, I said, 'That sounds pretty good. And then we did a 2nd one, & that was it. We did a little 'best of the 2 performances,' & then it became that signature, high-frequency stratospheric sound on 'With Or Without You.'"
It’s another example of winning simplicity. Edge believes the triumphal riff at the song’s ending is an encapsulation of his minimalist guitar approach: “The end of With Or Without You could have been so much bigger, so much more of a climax, but there’s this power to it which I think is even more potent because it’s held back.”
Bono explained that everybody in the group knows what the line "and you give yourself away" means: "It's about how I feel in U2 at times - exposed. I know that the group thinks I’m exposed & that I give myself away. I think if I do any damage to U2, it’s that I’m too open.” I'm not going to do many interviews this year. Because there's a cost to my personal life, and a cost to the group as well."
Bono called the refrain most important part of the song because it signifies a release of mental tension, "which is when the 'Aah-aah' comes out. That is what giving yourself away is, musically."
The title is a more sincere variation of the "can't live with them, can't live without them" idiom, which is typically used to describe something or someone that is frustrating, but hard to give up.
Bono intended this as part of a trilogy with 2 other songs that did not make the album, which explains the rather vague imagery. At the time, Bono didn't think it made any sense without the other 2 songs, but listeners were happy to fill in the gaps with their own interpretations.
On the R&H tour, Bono added the lyrics at the end... "Yeah, we'll shine like stars in the summer night, We'll shine like stars in the winter night, One heart, One hope, One love."
This was a song that caught Bono torn between a life of domesticity & free-spirited artistry. "I had some difficult emotional stuff going on. I didn't understand at that point the freedom that I would receive from a committed relationship. I was feeling guilty if I was talking to somebody in their record company who was really attractive. I was you know, just everything was at 11. But that's why 'With or Without You' is so operatic & that's OK."
In 1987, this was voted best single in a Rolling Stone magazine readers poll.
This was played on 2 episodes of the TV series Friends: the 2nd season (1995, "The One w the List"), & then in the 3rd season (1997, "The One Where Ross & Rachel Take A Break"). It became the anthem of the characters Ross & Rachel, w both scenes coming at pivotal moments in their relationship.
This was used in the movies Cousins (1989), Blown Away (1994) & Looking for Alibrandi (2000).
In The 2006 Office episode "Valentine's Day", Michael Scott uses this song as background music for his "Faces of Scranton" presentation.
The song returned twice to the UK Top 75 within the space of 8 mths, both due to performances by reality show contestants. In October 2008 following a performance by contestant Diana Vickers on X Factor & again in May 2009 thanks to Shaun Smith's rendition of the song during a semi-final edition of Britain's Got Talent.
This plays in 1 of the closing scenes of the TV series The Americans, which ran 2013-2018. It was used in a section where the family of Russian spies was separating as FBI closed in.
Recording: Regarding how the track was compiled, Lanois said they started with a rhythm on a Yamaha beatbox. Next came the chord sequence, then Adam Clayton's bass part, and then Edge using the Infinite Guitar.
The band brought Steve Lillywhite, who produced their 1st 3 albums, on board to remix the singles to boost their commercial appeal. On this track, his treatment of the drums was controversial among producers Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois. Lanois: WOWY was the 1 that there was the most discussion about, because Brian certainly had a very different idea of how it should go. I had yet another idea, & Steve pushed the mix in a direction that was a little more mainstream in its approach. When the drums came in, they were a little more crash, bang, which is a sound that Steve is known for. Certainly, Brian would have preferred to have the drums be more mysterious and more supportive."
Charts-peaked at: UK # 4
US: #1 (3 wks at #1) Canada: #1 IRE: #1
Video: The video, directed by Meiert Avis did very well on MTV, where it was nominated for 7 Video Music Awards, including Video Of The Yr. It won for Viewer's Choice, beating Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer."
Live Versions / Remixes:
WOWY - from R&H
WOWY (Zoo TV Tour - Washington, August 16 1992)
WOWY - Daniel Lanois version
San Siro Stadium in Milan, Italy on 21st July 2005 during the Vertigo tour
WOWY - at the BBC 2017
WOWY - live on the 2017 JT Anniv tour
WOWY - 30th Anniv Edit extended mix
WOWY - with orchestra
WOWY - with Chris Martin singing (when Bono got hurt with his bike accident, U2 band members played with various other singers)
When Rolling Stone ranked their Top50 U2 songs: 7
Been played live 842 times