The recording sessions in Berlin were going very poorly. The mood was dark and tempers were high. Bono and Edge were pushing for a new direction, Adam and Larry were worried that their music was getting too “out there”. Compromise seemed impossible. One morning, Edge was working on a different song when the idea came to him to loop one melody with another. He sat down and the opening notes of “One” rang out. Larry had come into the studio and hearing the tune, said to himself, “This is it.” One by one, each band member sat down and within minutes, the preliminary track was laid down. Bono sang lyrical ideas from the top of his head, putting voice to what they were all feeling at the time. They were feeling several things, and this song has several interpretations, by Bono’s own admission. There were even three different videos made for the song that most U2 fans feel saved the band.
Some see it as a song about the German population after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
Another interpretation is that it is a cry against AIDS. The Mark Pellington version that shows the slow-mo running buffalos signifies this not only in how time and life are fleeting- based on a painting by an HIV-positive artist.
This was also meant to be indicated in another version (the more commercially accepted) of the Phil Joanou version of Bono singing into the camera. Originally, there were supposed to be transvestites and drags running around in the background, but they were dropped later.
The Anton Corjibin version of the video, showing the band in drag, was meant to bring all these meanings together. This is supposed to illustrate the dual sexuality in everyone, the band playing in a circle (a universal symbol of unity), the see-saw (indicating imbalance and uniqueness), a small note about Bono’s obsession with the sister he never had, and a cry to his father for tolerance and understanding of who he is and who he had become.
Ironically, this is the one song on Achtung Baby that U2 Producer Brian Eno hated most.
Click here to download the guitar tab for One
Is it getting better…
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you…
Now you got someone to blame
You say…
One love
One life
When it’s one need… In the night
It’s one love
We get to share it
It leaves you baby
If you don’t care for it
Did I disappoint you?
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love…
And you want me to go without
Well it’s too late… Tonight…
To drag the past out… Into the light
We’re one… But we’re not the same
We get to carry each other…
Carry each other
One
Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus…
To the lepers in your head?
Did I ask too much?
More than a lot?
You gave me nothing
Now it’s all I got
We’re one… But we’re not the same
We hurt each other… Then we do it again
You say…
Love is a temple, love a higher law
Love is a temple, love the higher law
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
One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life…
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life…
But we’re not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other
One
One
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