“Listen to me now…”
Actually, I first thought of this weeks ago just before the new U2 album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, came out. It was the Saturday Night Live performance of “Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own” that had me in an emotionally charged mess.
I was so excited about the song, I got a link from a friend on where to get the lyrics. I read them… and was less than impressed. They weren’t bad lyrics, not by any means, but they just didn’t inspire the same awe I had felt when listening to the song. I listened to the song again and was just as in love with it as when I had first heard it. So what was it about the words that I loved so much?
It dawned upon me then that it was the delivery. He’s pitch perfect and every word is authentic. It’s become clearer in the weeks following. It’s written large in every song this band has ever done but most especially in this one. The gulf between them and all the rest widens when things like this begin to show their faces and listeners one day hear the difference between something being just sung, and then something being felt. It separates the pretender from the real thing and the one hit wonder from the 30-years-and-counting titans.
One particular aspect has become glaringly obvious. That is, the value of a singer of quality in a band. It’s the right inflection, the crack, the soaring note, the unspoken tear or unheard laughter. It’s all in the delivery.
“It’s no trick, ‘cos you can’t learn it.”
Posted on December 17th, 2004 under Tunes • 
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