“Running to Stand Still” – U2 
(Words: Bono, Music: U2, available on The Joshua Tree, Island Records 1987)

I understand why some people are turned off by U2.  Bono himself would probably think he’s a little too smug, and even though he means well, he often comes off as pompous and self-aggrandizing.  U2’s music, at least since reaching mega-stardom with The Joshua Tree, strives to be as important as the humanitarian causes the band champions.  Part of the reason these songs resonate with so many (aside from being incredible music compositions, and I think the three non-Bono members don’t always get the credit they deserve) is that these sounds take in the world with a wide lens.  Most of the massive hits draw on these broad, universal themes of the shared human experience – the pains and joys of love, struggles with faith, the search for something greater, and yes, even the quest for justice in a few songs.  Bono is not a poetic genius in the conventional sense at least (meaning you won’t see a book of “poetry,” or I really hope we won’t), but in his best moments he takes an event of any size and stretches it out to find the shared human experience in it.  Still, I see how some people prefer to approach life on a smaller level by listening to songs that focus on smaller, more individual stories and do the connecting and relating on their own level.  For better or worse, U2 songs have little lyric subtlety, but I’m not sure we always need our messages subtle and nuanced.  Sometimes, we’re best served to confront life at face value.

While Bono uses “I” almost as a universal “we” (think of “Where the Streets Have No Name,” for one example), he has a few moments of narrative brilliance where his lyrics serve as a detached observer.  The “I” in “Running to Stand Still” is not Bono, but rather the character he’s describing.  On one level, it’s a story about a woman in the thrall of heroin addiction.  He describes her helplessness and despair as her alternatives fade away, leaving only the needle and the looming cloud of death out in the horizon.  In particular, I’ve always loved how the song starts mid-thought with the word “and.”  Rather than try to tell her entire story – how she came to heroin, etc. – we enter the picture in media res and fill in the details on our own. Musically, “Running to Stand Still” flows like a body of water in the middle of the night.  The bending notes on the guitar and the building toms on Larry Mullen, Jr.’s drums create a somber mood.  Appropriately, the song ends without a true climax (a rarity for a U2 song, and a remarkable sign of restraint); at the moment near the end where it might build to something, the music turns the other way and fades down to just the main guitar riff.  Both musically and lyrically, it captures the hopelessly endless feeling of addiction and being trapped in the beginning of the story without a true middle or ending.  Even as a song about heroin addiction, Bono paints it in a way (save for the penultimate “needle’s chill” line) that casts it as addiction and obsession in general.  Most of us, hopefully to a lesser degree, have these single-minded moments that drive us nuts – perhaps with our jobs, or families, or anything else – where we feel that no matter how hard we try, we’re always standing in the same place.  The hope is that we can make our way out of this song and into one that reaches soaring heights and better places.

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