Jack White Photo: Jo McCaughey, Single: Third Man Records, U2: Island Records
This morning, I heard Jack White’s U2 cover of Love is Blindness. The song appears on the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013) and on the b-side of the Sixteen Saltines single, which is just oooofffa, love, right out the gate from his album, Blunderbuss.
Jack White rips and wails his way through Love is Blindness in his signature way that has made a fan girl since his days wearing red and white. Despite all his wailing, that I love so much, it also made me crave the quiet, dark melancholy of the original.
Created 20 years prior, the original U2 recording of Love is Blindness appears as the twelfth and final track on Achtung Baby (1991). While the sound of the album pulsed with sleek rock bravado, the mood was heavy, full of doubt and longing. Just when you thought you were out of this exceptional album, this euro-pop playground, they completely level you on the last track.
I love how Uncut contributor Gavin Martin described the song as "rapturous and unsettling." He continued, "With its stark, churchlike organ intro, pulsating bass synth and guitar reverb stretched into a hallucinatory squall, it brilliantly describes the discord and dread that provide a constant undertow to Achtung Baby. And yet, through its alluring sonic palette and wounded but sensual vocal, 'Love Is Blindness' also maps out a search for harmony and salvation".
The original is not the wailing or wild riffs from Jack White that can be listened to anytime, anywhere, but refuge and darkness is needed from the outside world.
LOVE IS BLINDNESS: JACK WHITE V. U2
This fangirl has room in her heart for both. Take a listen.
Appearing in Rolling Stone’s top 100 albums of all time, U2’s Achtung Baby is worth a revist. Though it’s hard to skip ahead, I get hooked from the first track, Zoo Station. A track that can make a Friday commute on the 405, with the weight of the week nearly behind you, even better. That got me in the mood for their fifth track from their 1993 follow-up album, Zooropa, Stay (Faraway, So Close!).
Such good music, that completely holds up 20 years later. It seems many are quite to see U2 ride off into the sunset because they don’t like Bono, or his alter egos – which, hello, both Beyonce and Garth Brooks had alter egos, or they begrudge one bad marketing faux pas on itunes. Sure they tried new things out in a mercurial rock landscape, some landed, some didn’t, but it would be a shame to write off their undeniable creative force and indelible mark on music history for reasons that are usually forgotten about in less than 180 characters.