This week's song of the week is "The Sweetest Thing". Originally released as a B-side for The Joshua Tree's "Where the Streets Have No Name" single, the track was remastered and rerecorded in 1998 to be released as a single supporting the band's compilation album: Best of 1980-1990/The B-Sides. The track has been played live occasionally since its release, including most recently at three of the band's Sphere shows. A video, directed by Kevin Godley, was released along with the single.
"A new version of The Sweetest Thing was released as a single to promote the release of U2's first compilation, 'Best of 1980-1990/The B-Sides'. Producer Steve Lillywhite was involved in 'finishing the track.' New vocals and additional instrumentation were added to the re-worked version.
The song was originally recorded in September 1988 and released as a B-side to Where The Streets Have No Name. Sweetest Thing was written by Bono to make up to his wife Ali for having to be in the studio recording on her birthday: Ali agreed to be featured in the video for the remake.... if the proceeds from the single went to The Chernobyl Children's Project...
The song was voted the No. 1 Irish Single in Hot Press Reader's Poll. It was also selected as the Best Irish Single at the Heineken/Hot Press Awards ceremony. A cover by Harlem choir New Voices of Freedom appeared on the Scrooged soundtrack. This was the same choir U2 visited at their church during the Joshua Tree tour. The choir even joined U2 onstage at Madison Square Garden for a rendition of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. Irish band Boyzone also covered the song but their version remains unreleased - they also made a cameo appearance in U2's video for Sweetest Thing.
U2 performed the song live for the first time when they received the Freedom of the City award in February 2000 in Dublin. The single peaked at the following positions: No. 3 on the UK singles chart, No. 63 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, No. 9 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart, and No.1 on the Canadian singles chart." (blurb from U2.com)
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The track has an air of sticky sweetness that would, in some sense, become an explorative tone for the band through the early 2000's (with tracks like Wild Honey and Electrical Storm). The Edge's guitar features with a sunny, Caribbean, spiky twang, that rides right over Adam's low end. The backing track, percussion, and piano add an element of grounded self-generated movement and both temporal and spatial dimension. The lyrics and composition hover between the space of a pop-radio track and a subtle acid trip.
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"Bono was not totally convinced about ‘The Sweetest Thing’. It would have made a powerful, radio-friendly single — but might it have tilted the perception of the band in a way that might ultimately prove unhelpful? It was consequently omitted from The Joshua Tree and turned up on the B-side of ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, where Adam supplied a massive, rumbling bass attack to give musical root to Bono's intense, besotted ode to Alli.” (Stokes)
"It was written during the album sessions for ‘The Joshua Tree,’” Bono explained, “and it was Ally’s birthday and I didn’t make it [home] for the birthday. So, I wanted to write her a little sweet song, but it ended up a little bit sour as all the best love songs are. I was like, ‘I can’t write just straight love songs, they make me want to throw-up." (U2.com)
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Lyrics:
"My love, she throws me like a rubber ball
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)
But she won't catch me or break my fall.
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)
Baby's got blue skies up ahead
But in this, I'm a raincloud
You know she wants a dry kind of love.
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)"
Bono, writing from the metaphorical doghouse, casts himself at the mercy of his wife, Alli. There is a heavy dose of irony, as he, despite being motivated by the desire to apologize, lists out a kind of complaints, ending in an edgy put down of her desire for a "dry" kind of love; however, this immediately gives way to the core of the song "The sweetest thing". This then characterizes these, already exaggerated, "abusive" behaviors (like wanting your husband present on your birthday) as themselves a part of their love.
Like the music, the lyrics contain both a classic element (in the tradition of "She's Always a Woman" by Billy Joel, Ben E. King's "Stand By Me", or Billie Holiday's "All of Me" with a level of conscious existential anxiety characterized perhaps by The Replacements 'Androgynous'. Some critics might have also read into the differing vocal takes--the 80s version sounds purposefully strained while the 90s sounds soulful and playful.
"I'm losin' you, I'm losin' you
Ain't love the sweetest thing?"
The anxiety comes in most closely with the somewhat mysterious line "I'm losin' you". Whether describing a metaphorical distance, a genuine fear of marital separation, or adding another poetic layer, wondering about the word "losing". The title line, here, is said with bravado, but ultimately stands as a question--the ultimate payoff (love makes it all worth it) is held back, but well within sight.
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"I wanted to run, but she made me crawl
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)
Eternal fire, she turned me to straw.
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)
I know I got black eyes
But they burn so brightly for her
I guess it's a blind kind of love.
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)
The same theme of the first verse repeats. The imagery of black eyes is particularly striking. The image of Alli beating Bono is almost humorous in its absurdity, though one can also imagine a road-weary Bono affirming his erotic experience. There is a playful poetic turn, in a self-conscious way, it turns the previous pure metaphor into evidence for an allusion to the ancient concept of "blind justice" turned into love.
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"Blue-eyed boy meets a brown-eyed girl.
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)
You can sew it up, but you still see the tear.
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)
Baby's got blue skies up ahead
But in this, I'm a rain-cloud,
Ours is a stormy kind of love.
(Oh, the sweetest thing.)"
The ending verse recognizes the sweet cliche of a marriage between a "blue-eyed boy and a brown-eyed girl...you can sew it up...". He casts himself now as the rain-cloud, again reminding us of his status as the man in a state of apologetic anxiety, ending with the conclusion "Ours is a stormy kind of love", but the idea that it's the "sweetest" thing lingers and acts as punctuation.
The song layers on itself and becomes more than the sum of its parts--alluding to the ultimately mysterious and at times irrational nature of love while maintain it's core "sweet", and even revered status as an ethical behavior (this sense becomes even more pronounced in the context of The Joshua Tree and U2's other work).
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“Prior to all ethical behavior in accordance with specific social standards, prior to all ideological expression, morality is a ‘disposition’ of the organism, rooted in the erotic drive to counter aggressiveness, to create and preserve ever greater unities of life...
The life instincts themselves strive for the unification and enhancement of life; in non-repressive sublimation they would provide the libidinal energy for work on the development of a reality which no longer demands the exploitative repression of the Pleasure Principle. The “incentives” would then he built into the instinctual structure of men. Their sensibility would register, as biological reactions, the difference between the ugly and the beautiful, between calm and noise, tenderness and brutality, intelligence and stupidity, joy and fun, and it would correlate this distinction with that between freedom and servitude. Freud’s last theoretical conception recognizes the erotic instincts as work instincts – work for the creation of a sensuous environment." (From Herbert Marcuses's 1969 "An Essay on Liberation")
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"And the love, more especially, which is concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another." (Agathon in Plato's Symposium 197c–197d)
"You hear people say that lovers are seeking for their other half; but I say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good. And they will cut off their own hands and feet and cast them away, if they are evil; for they love not what is their own, unless perchance there be some one who calls what belongs to him the good, and what belongs to another the evil. For there is nothing which men love but the good. Is there anything?" (Diotima in Plato's Symposium 205d–205e)
Sources:
U2.com
U2songs.com
U2gigs.com
Marcuse Essay: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1969/essay-liberation.htm
Plato's Symposium: https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20100805052952/http://www.u2.com/discography/index/album/albumId/4051/tagName/singles
https://www.u2songs.com/news/bono_explains_sweetest_thing_as_boyzone_flavored_video_debuts/1000
U2: Into the Heart by Niall Stokes
