What They Were Really Born to Sing

248. U2, "Hallelujah Here She Comes"
Written by U2: produced by JImmy Iovine
Island 99250 1988 Billboard: # 3 (as B-side of "Desire")

I made that comment some posts back about fun early U2 B-sides, and their new album just came out and it's even duller than the last one (no "Vertigo"), so I think it's time to briefly take note of this song, which isn't even available on Rhapsody so I can't give you a link off the title. "Hallelujah, Here She Comes" is one of several dozen songs that U2 recorded during the Rattle & Hum period. More than any other of the band's projects, the process of selection on this one was fascinating. Some performances ended up in the film, some ended up on the album, some ended up as B-sides, and some have only shown up on bootlegs, and I'm by no means the only person who would have shuffled the available tracks in their places around had he gotten the chance. During this period, in the wake of the enormous global success of The Joshua Tree, U2 self-consciously embraced American music--and when you say "self-conscious" in relation to Bono, you're obviously talking really self-conscious. They recorded a song with B. B. King in Sun Studios; they sang a song about hearing Billie Holiday on the radio in Harlem; they had Bob Dylan play organ on a track whose lyrics were almost incomprehensible (even though it had been neophyte Al Kooper who had famously played organ on "Like a Rolling Stone").

Predictably, the best songs for the project were the less self-conscious ones. The ElvisQuoteaRama "A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel" in particular is a sad little mishmosh, just begging to be matched to footage from Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train a few years later to make a true YouTube classic. By contrast, "All I Want Is You," which seems to have no clear musical referent, is probably one of the band's best ballads, right down to Bono's last-minute entry in the Roger Daltrey/Bruce Springsteen Sustained Classic Rock Scream Sweepstakes.

"Hallelujah Here She Comes" isn't that classic, but it's a lovely little gem just the same. "Desire," the A-side of this single, is a good song, but it's as clear a Bo Diddley homage as Springsteen's "She's the One." The beat on this song, however, is all its own, propulsive, vaguely cowboyish, but really just Larry and Adam laying down a beat for their mate Paul Hewson to goof around on. Not only does it have an unpompous call-and-response on the Hallelujahs, but the simple lyrics here are less portentously witty than many of Bono's. "I see you're dressed in black/I guess I'm not coming back" is no "How long/Will we sing this song," but it's certainly worth repeating.