Mysterious Ways Album: Achtung Baby (1991)
Gloria Album: October (1981)
by U2
In this song, the main character, Johnny, has an epiphany through an encounter with a mysterious feminine being. To explain, we turn to Into The Heart by Niall Stokes.
"It's a song about a man living on little or no romance," Bono says. "It's a song about women - or a woman - but it's addressed to him."
Bono talks a bit about theology and about El Shaddai - the third and least used name for God in the Bible, which translates as "the breasted one."
"I've always believed that the spirit is a feminine thing," he says.
"Mysterious Ways" is not about a particular woman. It is about women in general, and the way they entrance, and often dominate men. Says Bono, "At times I do tend to idealize women. It's easy to fall into the trap of separating them into angels and devils for the sake of the drama. But there's no way that there's ever anything anti-women involved. Our songs are not politically correct. They are written from a man's point of view. He's wrestling with different things, there's a flash of anger and hurt here and there. But I don't think women come out badly."
Bono got the idea for this song from a conversation he had with Rev. Jack Heaslip, whom the band met when they were students at Mount Temple Secondary School and he was a guidance counselor. Heaslip became a trusted advisor to the band and a sounding board for questions about spirituality and religion.
"He mused on the idea that the gender of God is not clear in the original biblical Hebrew," Bono wrote in his memoir Surrender. "In fact one of the names of God, El Shaddai, means 'the breasted one.' If the greatest creative force in the world is a woman giving birth, then of course the greatest creative force in the universe is likely to be a feminine spirit."
While recording this in Berlin, U2 came up with the basis for their song "One." In a rush of creativity, they put together "One" and finished "Mysterious Ways" later. This was very refreshing for the band - they were having a hard time coming up with anything and even considered breaking up.
The line, "If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel - on your knees boy!" is probably a reference to oral sex, although it can have a more innocent religious meaning, like kneeling on a pew.
Bono performed this on the Zoo TV tour in character as The Fly, a parody of an egomaniacal rock star, wearing huge sunglasses and leather.
This was the second single from the Achtung Baby album. The first single was "The Fly," which did well globally but stiffed in America, reaching just #61. "Mysterious Ways" went to #9 in the US and got lots of airplay on a variety of formats. "One" was the next single, and it was also a big hit in America and around the world.
Recording the album was challenging, but ultimately very rewarding. So much so that Daniel Lanois, who produced it with Brian Eno, cites it as his favorite collaboration.
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