from the NLotH "Collector's Magazine", which came with my album in pdf form:

Bono: So, here we have "Magnificent". I was born to be with you / In this space and time / After that and ever after I haven't had a clue. While writing this song, I was thinking about the kind of lyric Cole Porter would sing, but I was also thinking about the Magnificat. Bach does a good one...(sings the tune and laughs). This one is about two lovers holding on to each other and trying to turn their life into worship. Not of each other, but of being alive, of God... of spirit.


Interviewer: Going back to "Magnificent", these is a transcendent quality that follows the narrative in each of the songs. Do you aim to capture this transcendent feeling in the music also?
Adam: I think that is what we look for in our music, we are much more interested in finding that transcendent thin than in, say, finding just a good song. We don't always hit it, but by looking for it we do abandon a certain kind of methodical approach that, in a funny way, serves us well.
Interviewer: I can see how 'methodical' may not always work for U2.
Adam: Well, what you end up with is craft, and craft isn't exciting at the end of the day, because it is not an idea. Whereas what I tend to think is that we pursue ideas.


Bono: "Here is another character, a war veteran. In my head he was part of the Somali Adventure that went so wrong. We think about him as someone who has not been able to reintegrate or re-enter earth's atmosphere yet. He hasn't managed to return to himself. I believe insanity is the sane response of sane individuals to insane situations. In "Moment of Surrender", he has dragged his wife into drugs and booze, he can't live with what he has done to her and so he breaks down beside an ATM machine and begs God to deliver them. He ends up in a motel room at the end of his rope. He picks up his cell to call someone either for help or drugs, we don't know, but he can't get a signal. Then something mad happens. The phone starts to text him instructions. He doesn't know where the messages are coming from, he is not sure whether they are from someone he knows or has met... Are they from his conscience, is it a crank, or is it God? This altered state is the driving force in "Unknown Caller".

^ I can't even tell you what that concept, paired with the song and its lyrics, does to my artistic guts.