Baby, baby, baby, light my way....
One of the most amazing things about music is its ability to, for the lack of a better phrase, shift its tune. And how with the passage of time, it can take on a new meaning. Like in life, it can be something we used to despise, but then we slowly develop a love for over time. Or the exact opposite (which is something everyone is guilty of at some point. I will admit, I still have Len’s first album). Or it can be something that’s always been there, but then one day we notice how truly brilliant it is, and we wonder how we ever got through life without it. In this particular instance, I’m talking about the tenth track on U2′s Achtung Baby, “Ultraviolet (Light My Way).
Since seeing them live for the first time time in 2001, I’ve loved U2′s music. And while their 2000 “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” is what really opened my ears, mind and soul to them, I had always been familiar with their hits from the late 80s/90s, which of course pushed me to purchased the albums in their entirety for the deeper cuts, with Achtung Baby being one of them. Looking back now, I can’t remember the day, the year, or anything specific about it, but I just know that one day, I was sitting somewhere (again, my memory is horrible), listening to Achtung Baby on my iPod, and while going through the “regular” tracks on the album (One, Mysterious Ways, Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, The Fly, etc), at one point I remember just being ‘caught’ by a particular verse or chorus of a song that I had heard in the background of my listens so many times prior, but that never really gave much notice to. So I looked at the screen, and the song was “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”. When the song was done, I played it again. And again. And again. I was in love. An old song had become new to me, in the most wonderful away that a piece of music can. Maybe it’s because it’s a song I never hear on the radio, or that it’s a hidden, beloved gem that only true U2 fans would know, but for me, it’s something that reminds me of how music, regardless of its age, can continue to inspire and make you discover a wonderful thing that you were never looking for in the first place. To this day, it’s one of my favorite songs ever, and for the particular fact that one day it made me realize that something I always took for granted as background noise could be something truly wonderful.