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Ultraviolet (Light My Way)

"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)"
Song by U2 from the album Achtung Baby
Released 19 November 1991
Genre Rock
Length 5:31
Label Island
Writer(s) U2 (music), Bono (lyrics)
Producer(s) Daniel Lanois with Brian Eno
Achtung Baby track listing
"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
(9)
"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)"
(10)
"Acrobat"
(11)
Music sample

"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" is a song by Irish rock band U2 and the tenth track from their 1991 album Achtung Baby. Ostensibly about love and dependency, the song also lends itself to religious interpretations, with listeners finding allusions to the Book of Job and writers finding spiritual meaning in its invocation of the light spectrum.

The song's composition and recording incorporate both serious and throwaway elements, in keeping with the rest of Achtung Baby. While not released as a single, the song has appeared in two films and a U2 business venture was named after it. "Ultraviolet" played a featured role during the encores of the group's 1992–1993 Zoo TV and 2009–2011 U2 360° Tours.

"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" began as two different demos, one variously called "Ultraviolet" and "69" (which eventually evolved into the B-side "Lady with the Spinning Head") and an alternately arranged demo called "Light My Way". Over the course of the recording sessions, U2 added various overdubs to the song, but producer Brian Eno believed these additions negatively impacted the track. Eno aided the group in editing down the song, and he explained his assistance as such: "I'd go in and say, 'The song has gone, whatever it is you liked about this song is not there anymore. Sometimes, for example, the song would have disappeared under layers of overdubs."

"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" is written in a 4/4 time signature. The lyrics of "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" are addressed to a lover, and imply that their relationship is threatened by some sort of personal or spiritual crisis, coupled with a sense of unease over obligations. Indeed, lead vocalist Bono has called the song "a little disturbed".

The song opens with 45 seconds of soft synthesizers and ethereal vocals, somewhat akin in atmospherics to the group's early 1980s songs "Tomorrow" and "Drowning Man"; during this, Bono laments that "sometimes I feel like checking out." This is followed by the entrance of drums and guitar in a familiar U2 rhythm, as Bono describes the burdens of love and how he is "in the black; can't see or be seen." Each verse culminates with the refrain "Baby, baby, baby, light my way." Flood, who engineered and mixed the recording, noted that there was considerable laughter and debate during the sessions about whether Bono could get away with singing the repeated "baby"s, one of the most heavily used clichés in pop songs and one that he had avoided up to that point in his songwriting; Flood later commented that "he got away with it alright."


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