Lyric Analysis 5: "One Tree Hill" by U2

Time for this week's analysis, a review of One Tree Hill, by U2, from their Joshua Tree album. The song was dedicated to the memory of friend Greg Carroll, and "One Tree Hill" was written for his funeral. We'll be looking at the lyrics from a universal perspective, in other words, what we can draw from them, and what the song has to say about the human condition in general. To learn more about Greg Carroll, his death, his relationship with the band, and the inspiration for the song's title, go to http://www.geocities.com/dagsyfm/u2/onetreehill.html

Here are the lyrics:

We turn away to face the cold, enduring chill
As the day begs the night for mercy, love.
A sun so bright it leaves no shadows
Only scars carved into stone on the face of earth.

The moon is up and over One Tree Hill
We see the sun go down in your eyes.
You run like a river on to the sea
You run like a river runs to the sea.

And in the world, a heart of darkness, a fire-zone
Where poets speak their heart then bleed for it
Jara sang, his song a weapon in the hands of love.
You know his blood still cries from the ground.
It runs like a river runs to the sea.
It runs like a river to the sea.

I don't believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts
While bullets rape the night of the merciful.
I'll see you again when the stars fall from the sky
And the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill.

We run like a river runs to the sea
We run like a river to the sea.
And when it's rainin', rainin' hard
That's when the rain will break a heart.

Rainin', rainin' in your heart
Rainin' in your heart.
Rainin', rain into your heart
Rainin', rainin', rainin'
Rain into your heart.
Rainin', ooh, rain in your heart, yeah. Feel it.

Oh great ocean
Oh great sea
Run to the ocean
Run to the sea.

I chose this song in large part because of it's unusual rhyme scheme -- mostly due to the fact that few lines rhyme at all, and most that do so are because they are repeated lines. Now, B-Dog has nothing against rhyme. I love rhyme -- lotsa rhyme, rhyme on time, rhyme on a dime, rhyme with a twist of lime in a cool clime. But, songwriters and music lovers, do not be bound by a tyranny of rhyme. Sometimes you can improve a song by not rhyming, because you are able to draw from a much greater storehouse of words and images.
Another thing, for those of you with access to the recording: you'll notice that although this is a "sad" song, the music is uptempo -- you would even think, if you only heard the music track, that it could be a "happy" song (at least until close to the end). Amateur song-writers often think that every sad, or sometimes even serious, song must be sloooooooow, with lots of minor chords. Not necessarily (or as my childhood friend Terry Bartle used to say, "not sarily the ness). There are many famous "sad" lyrics that are paired with uptempo, often major key, instrumentation. This is often done on purpose, to highlight the absurdity of the human condition and/ or to convey a sense of wrong, or to make the sad lyrics even more effective by standing in contrast to the music.
Near the end of this song, The Edge's guitar playing gets more aggressive, more angry, as does Bono's vocals. The second-to-last stanza is uncontrolled emotion, suddenly switching in the final stanza to that slow, mournful dirge we might have expected from the beginning. Effective.

The first stanza jumps out because we have a strange mix of symbolism. This world in "One Tree Hill" is surreal -- one of extreme sorrow at both ends. The day has been so hot, with a sun so bright, that the sun has carved scars into the face of the earth. But now that the day is begging the night for mercy, the narrator expects a "cold, enduring chill." Talk about hopeless.

Bono uses the cliche "river to the sea" effectively in the second stanza, redeeming it from cliche status because he doesn't use it the way hundreds of writers do (river as metaphor for time). Instead, it is his deceased friend who has "run like a river to the sea". He has died suddenly. This phrase is repeated throughout the song, sometimes in slightly different form, always to compelling effect.

We have some Bible imagery in the third Stanza (Bono and Dylan use scripture more effectively, and often, than many CCM writers do), "his blood still cries from the ground." We get some more in the next stanza, when we are told the time of our narrator's next meeting with his deceased friend -- it will not be till "the stars fall from the sky and the moon has turned red"; a phrase used often in both Old and New Testaments to describe a time of sudden judgment on rebellious humans (most famously appropriated by Jesus in Matthew 24 to describe the Last Days).

This same stanza shows the writer's perspective on life, in the wake of a loved one's untimely death: "I don't believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts / while bullets rape the night of the merciful." How can we, the narrator asks, be so frivilous, so care-free, so nonchalant, in a world that has obviously gone wrong? And what is all of our fates? What hope do we have in the face of tragedy? That we too will run to the "great ocean," we will escape this wicked and perverse generation (I don't think Bono would mind my own use of scripture here). We will embrace the sea, and leave behind the depravity around us.

Notice the lack of adverbs, and the use of concise verbs and concrete nouns. It forces us into the song. We could quibble over minor editorial concerns -- perhaps the first line of the second stanza could say "The moon rises over One Tree Hill" rather than "The moon is up and over One Tree Hill." But that's a line-judgment call. The song as a whole is a testament to crisp, imagistic writing.

By the way, B-Dog is aware that there is a TV show called "One Tree Hill." I've not seen it, and have no idea if they got the title from this song, or if the show is of the same quality as the song. I have my doubts, but who knows. Anyone seen it?