Can you paint a picture with sound?
U2's "Miami" and "New York" gave it a try
By now, you’ve all heard the famous Frank Zappa comment: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” As someone who’s spent a good part of his life — and my Substack — writing about music, I respectfully disagree.
When you have something to see, like a music video and hear, like a song, and lyrics to interpret along with all of it as well as a performance, which can vary greatly (think of the Bob Dylan “Shelter From The Storm” on “Blood On The Tracks” and that wild raucous version of the same song I wrote about on “Hard Rain” a little while back), I always thought there was a lot to take in and plenty to write about.
The idea, though, wasn’t for ME to write about it. I’d been there, done that, am still doing that. You see, I wanted to get my AP Literature and AP Language students to see what they could do with something that took them some place else. I was pretty confident that U2 songs weren’t going to show up on the AP end-of-the-year test. Heaven forbid, they got contemporary! (U2, incidentally, are reportedly working on a new record and will return to Las Vegas and the Sphere in August.)
So the two songs I chose — “Miami” from U2’s generally derided “Pop” album and “New York” from their return to the top of the charts “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” — were so very different, not unlike the cities that U2 tried to reflect in their songs and their videos, it should have given them a real contrast.
How would four guys from Ireland try to capture the spirit of these places in music videos, songs that appeared on different albums, too, each in a whole different context. I thought it’d be interesting to see how they felt about each one. That it wasn’t my students’ kind of music could only be a good thing.
, I would usually do this assignment a little later in the school year, after they’d been more or less accustomed to my weirdness. And it worked. They didn’t complain. When you’re teaching critical thinking, forcing them to make comparisons they never thought they’d be asked to, I think that’s how you learn.
MIAMI
The song “Miami” came first in 1997 after U2 had decided to try to mock their celebrity, opening the tour at KMart, including a giant mechanical lemon on stage (that trapped the band once) and the song was, as guitarist The Edge called it, “Creative tourism.” Q magazine called it “a terrible song by a great artist” and Vulture Magazine ranked it 186th out of 232 ranked U2 songs, suggesting that “If there’s a less interesting premise for a song than “bored millionaires who can’t finish their album go take a vacation at a luxury destination” not sure what it is.” It’s definitely a different sound for U2 but my students didn’t immediately dislike it — which surprised me.
NEW YORK
Another musical soundscape that tries to capture some of the craziness in the world’s largest city and how that can, at times, reflect the life changes that strike a person growing up, “New York” is a song that Bono explained was a sort of tribute to Frank Sinatra and Lou Reed. "There was a verse about Lou Reed, that didn't make it, and a verse about Frank Sinatra (that also didn't make it). And Lou has an album called “New York” and he mentions my name on one of the tracks, "Beginning of a Great Adventure". And I just think he is to New York what James Joyce was to Dublin."
The song appeared on “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” in 2000. Later, Bono explained the left out the Sinatra verse because he didn’t want people to think the song was autobiographical - “Lose your balance, lose your wife.” Vulture liked this one a bit better, ranking it 113th, saying “New Yorkers can’t be unbiased about songs about New York, especially ones written by people who have gigantic crushes on the city. “I just got a place in New York” sounds like every college grad arriving here from Ohio with a gleam in their eye, and that loud, dirty guitar on the chorus sounds like gridlock on a holiday weekend. It’s also an alternate reality: what Bono could have ended up like, had his life gone another way.”
The kids generally liked this one, too. But now, their challenge was to write about each one. As we did music as the year wound down, this was a fun way to end the year.
HERE WAS THEIR ASSIGNMENT: AP LANGUAGE and COMPOSITION
Congratulations! As you probably could tell from the emails some of you received, I was very pleased with your writing on The Beatles. Excited about how you did! For some, it was your best writing of the year.
IDEA: It has been my contention since I started teaching that music can be a valuable tool in helping students learn to write, to increase their vocabulary and their ability to make evaluations – part of anybody’s critical judgment.
TODAY’S ASSIGNMENT: (Counts like an exam)
· We will watch and listen to two little-known U2 videos of songs they wrote about two very important American cities. (They are from Ireland, remember.)
· Watching and listening to each video, your assignment is:
A. Choose which video fits better with the song. Write AT LEAST a paragraph.
B. Choose which song does a better job of capturing its subject. Write AT LEAST THREE paragraphs. PRIZES for the best work!