The song New York is about someone going through a midlife crisis, from the suburbs who wants to leave their “boring” suburban life behind and move to a city, like New York, where life is presumably very exciting. Unfortunately, this person is being kept back by something, presumable a wife and children as alluded to in the line You got to put women and children first. Bono explains this: “The song New York is not my story; it’s somebody who’s had it with the country and the quiet life or the suburbs and is going to the big city with the hope that the big city will crack them wide open and they’ll discover other sides of themselves. And it happens. But that’s not me; if anything, I would love some of the suburbs right now.”
Click here to download the guitar tab for New York
In New York freedom looks like too many choices
In New York I found a friend to drown out the other voices
Voices on the cell phone
Voices from home
Voices of the hard sell
Voices down the stairwell
In New York, just got a place in New York
In New York summers get hot
Well into the hundreds
You can’t walk around the block
Without a change of clothing
Hot as a hair dryer in your face
Hot as a handbag and a can of mace
In New York, I just got a place in New York
New York, New York
In New York you can forget
Forget how to sit still
Tell yourself you will stay in
But it’s down to Alphaville
New York, New York, New York
New York, New York, New York
The Irish have been coming here for years
Feel like they own the place
They got the airport, city hall, concrete
Asphalt, they even got the police
Irish, Italians, Jews and Hispanics
Religious nuts, political fanatics in the stew,
Living happily not like me and you
That’s where I lost you… New York
New York, New York
New York, New York
In New York I lost it all to you and your vices
Still I’m staying on to figure out my mid life crisis
I hit an iceberg in my life
But you know I’m still afloat
You lose your balance, lose your wife
In the queue for the lifeboat
You got to put the women and children first
But you’ve got an unquenchable thirst for New York
New York, New York
New York, New York
In the stillness of the evening
When the sun has had its day
I heard your voice a-whispering
Come away child
New York, New York
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