Let's Start the Year with a Little Larceny

My favorite song of 2014 was the closing cut of U2’s new album Songs of Innocence. Though I generally avoid poaching content, I'll hedge my bets here because the song, “The Troubles,” is so powerful.

Lyrics are hard to just read without the music to inform them. Sometimes this is especially true of good lyrics, which are often oblique and, well, lyrical. The songs sounds unlike anything else U2 has done, and the lead vocals are flat-out brilliant and innovative—and supported beautifully by Lykke Li on the chorus.

Some notes on the lyrics follow, but first here they are:

“The Troubles”
(U2 feat. Lykke Li)

CHORUS:
Somebody stepped inside your soul
Somebody stepped inside your soul
Little by little they robbed and stole
Till someone else was in control

☙

You think it’s easier
To put your finger on the trouble
When the trouble is you
And you think it’s easier
To know your own tricks
Well, it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do

I have a will for survival
So you can hurt me and hurt me some more
I can live with denial
But you’re not my troubles anymore

[CHORUS]

You think it’s easier
To give up on the trouble
If the trouble is destroying you
You think it’s easier
But before you threw me a rope
It was the one thing I could hold on to

I have a will for survival
So you can hurt me then hurt me some more
I can live with denial
But you’re not my troubles anymore

[CHORUS]

God knows it’s not easy
Taking on the shape of someone else’s pain
God now you can see me
I’m naked and I’m not afraid
My body’s sacred and I’m not ashamed

☙

We know the Troubles in Irish culture means the period of violence in Northern Ireland (and sometimes Ireland itself) in the 1970s and 1980s that left a legacy for years after. The lyrics here refer to a personal Troubles. Although they can speak to any traumatic event that leaves the victim struggling to break free, Bono’s liner notes hint at the inspiration of the song:

“Dreams are not always safe places,  neither are places deemed to be safe. Some can live with cruelty and abuse. Some have to . . .  when the children of any church aren’t served but instead enslaved by an abuse of power, extraordinary acts of atonement are required to put things back together . . . Honesty is just the starting point . . . secrets can make you sick.”
The sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests is about as tragic a story as can be imagined. This song takes place right in the heart of a survivor, now grown, struggling to reclaim everything. The song offers a vision of doing just that, reconnecting with our God-given dignity and sovereignty:

God knows it’s not easy
Taking on the shape of someone else’s pain
God now you can see me
I’m naked and I’m not afraid
My body’s sacred and I’m not ashamed