"Heaven And Hell " song lyrics U2 from Achtung Baby session leftovers

From the Achtung Baby recording sessions, Heaven and Hell was a non album track released along with Blow Your House Down to and Oh, Berlin to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the album. 

The lyrics explore the collapse of a once-idealized love, now disintegrating under the weight of its own contradictions. Bono’s voice, seemingly oscillating between raw vulnerability and bitter resignation, tells a story of romantic disillusionment. The imagery evokes a sacred-profane tension, where love’s purity (“Like an angel on some stained-glass”) clashes against the raw, carnal realities of the relationship (“Dirty boy, dirty girl having a dirty laugh”). 

The duality of "heaven and hell" becomes a metaphor not just for the shifting emotional landscape between two lovers, but for the very nature of intimate relationships, where moments of divine connection often crumble into something more grotesque and disappointing. In these lyrics, Bono wrestles with the tension between the sacred ideal and the messy human experience—flirting with religious imagery while plumbing the depths of personal failure.

Conceptually, this theme of love’s dichotomy resonates with two other key tracks from Achtung Baby: "Love Is Blindness" and "So Cruel." 

In "Love Is Blindness," Bono grapples with love as a destructive force, wrapped in yearning and desperation, with the refrain suggesting a kind of willful ignorance to its darker undertones. Similarly, "So Cruel" portrays a love caught between pleasure and pain, where emotional cruelty becomes part of the seductive dance.

Together, these songs, including "Heaven and Hell," form a triptych that interrogates the nature of love as both salvation and damnation. They explore how lovers, in their quest for transcendence, can end up bound and bleeding, searching for meaning in the spaces between devotion and destruction. The layers of religious and carnal imagery woven throughout these lyrics reinforce U2's broader fascination with dualities—heaven and hell, angelic ideals and fallen realities, constantly intertwining in the space of human relationships.

"Heaven And Hell " song lyrics U2 from Achtung Baby session leftovers

You used to think I was something special
You haven't thought that in a while
You liked the company of my inner devil
'Cause my inner devil could make you smile

Like an angel on some stained-glass
Not some relic from the recent past
With your pale breasts and your fresh wound
And your eyes to heaven with your hands bound

I thought you'd find me when you went looking
In truth, you'd have to be there to look around
How come the honeysuckle isn't sucking
And I got a bee sting walking on the ground

Did our brass bead become a mud bath
A dirty boy, dirty girl having a dirty laugh
I saw you coming, I had you covered
Till you discovered

That we're heaven, heaven, heaven and hell
Heaven, heaven, heaven, heaven and hell

Picnick table and a china cup
We had an airbed that was all stuffed
Now it's room 64 at the chateau
Ask the front desk where does your love go

Is it to heaven, heaven, heaven or to hell
Is it to heaven, heaven, heaven or hell
Baby, we're heaven, heaven, heaven, heaven and hell

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Achtung Baby is steeped in biblical references and hellish imagery, reflecting U2’s exploration of moral dualities and the darker side of human experience. Throughout the album, Bono’s lyrics are laced with religious allusions, invoking heaven, hell, angels, and devils as metaphors for love, betrayal, and inner conflict. 

In "Until the End of the World," for instance, the betrayal of Christ by Judas is recast as a narrative of personal treachery, while "The Fly" channels the voice of a fallen angel, offering a cynical perspective on truth and morality. This fascination with biblical themes culminated during the Zoo TV Tour, where Bono embodied the persona of MacPhisto, a devilish character clad in gold horns and white makeup. 

Through MacPhisto, Bono gave voice to the seductive and corrupting aspects of fame, power, and desire, amplifying the album’s recurring motifs of temptation, sin, and redemption. By merging the sacred and the profane, Achtung Baby becomes not just a meditation on personal relationships, but a broader commentary on the human condition, echoing the struggle between salvation and damnation.

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