I got the new U2 CD The Best of 1990-2000 Special Edition on Monday (the release day!) and it's excellent. The new mixes of several of the songs from POP are excellent, specially Gone. There's also a new song in it, previously unreleased from the soundtrack of the upcoming Gangs of New York, The Hands that Built America:

Oh, my love,
it's a long way we've come
From the freckled hills
to the steel and glass canyons
From the stony fields
to hanging steel from sky
From digging in our pockets
for a reason
not to say goodbye

These are the hands
that built America

Last saw your face
in a watercolor sky
As sea birds argue,
a long goodbye
I took your kiss
on the spray of the new land star
You gotta live with your dreams,
don't make them so hard

And these are the hands that built America
America

Of all the promises,
is this one we could keep
Of all of the dreams,
is this one still out of reach

Halle, holy

It's early fall,
there's a cloud on the New York skyline
Innocence dragged
across a yellow line

These are the hands that built America
These are the hands that built America
America

As someone who has left his native country, right now this song feels really close to me. After a few 'emigrations', after years of jumping from country to country and city to city... suddenly you stop belonging anywhere. And the song captures that too, in a way: the reminiscence of old places, the promise of the new, the ache, the future...

Categories: personal
Posted by diego on November 7 2002 at 10:48 PM