Wide Awake: Seeing U2’s Bad in a New Light

by Mikaela VanMoorleghem, MPA

Bad has always been my favorite U2 song. I’ve loved it for years without fully understanding why—it just moved me. But recently, while reading Bono’s memoir Surrender, I came across his explanation of the story behind Bad, and suddenly the lyrics hit me in a completely different way.

Bono briefly shares that the song was inspired by a close friend named Andy, who struggled with heroin addiction, and by the trauma of witnessing the Dublin and Monaghan bombings on May 17, 1974. That day, loyalist paramilitaries detonated four car bombs—three in Dublin and one in Monaghan—killing 33 people and injuring over 300.

After reading Bono’s account, I listened to Bad again—and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The lyrics took on new meaning. I felt compelled to write down my thoughts.

This is just my interpretation. I could be way off base. But these are the thoughts that came to me as I sat with the song in a new light, thinking about trauma, addiction, grief, and the longing for release. Thank you for reading.

"Bad" by U2

Verse One Reflection

Lyrics:

If you twist and turn away

If you tear yourself in two again

If I could, yes I would

If I could, I would

Let it go

Surrender

Dislocate

"If you tear yourself in two again"

To me, this line speaks powerfully to Andy’s internal fragmentation. After May 17, 1974, he became two versions of himself: the innocent 11-year-old before the bombing, and the traumatized child who followed his father onto a street strewn with bodies. That experience created a fracture—emotional, psychological, and spiritual—that never fully healed. Later in life, as he struggled with addiction, Andy was caught between the person he longed to be and the person the trauma had shaped him into. In trying to return to some form of normalcy, he was "tearing himself in two again," caught in a painful cycle of hope and relapse.

"If I could, yes I would / Let it go / Surrender / Dislocate"

In my mind, these words reflect the helplessness and desire to break free—from memory, from pain, from addiction. “If I could” acknowledges the tragic truth: Andy couldn’t simply let go of what happened. The trauma and the drug habit were intertwined; one fed the other. “Dislocate” suggests an aching wish to detach from the past, to emotionally sever himself from the horror of that day. But in truth, the roots of May 17 were buried too deep.

This part of the song becomes almost a prayer (Bono is Catholic and I imagined him singing this as a way of prayer)—an imagined offering of relief Bono might have wished for his friend. It’s full of longing, of empathy, and of sorrow: If I could take this from you, I would.

Verse Two Reflection

Lyrics:

If I could throw this lifeless lifeline to the wind

Leave this heart of clay

See you walk, walk away

Into the night

And through the rain

Into the half-light

And through the flame

"If I could throw this lifeless lifeline to the wind"

This line speaks to desperation—the wish to reach out with some kind of saving force, even if it feels empty or too late. I suspect that Andy, in his addiction, was often lifeless himself—exhausted by trauma, grief, and the grip of drugs. If he could have tossed some form of connection or cry for help into the world and been pulled back to life, he would have. But the lifeline was tangled, frayed. He may have hoped someone would catch it, or perhaps he just wished to let it go and be free.

"Leave this heart of clay"

Clay is soft and moldable—raw, broken, vulnerable under pressure. I think it’s safe to conclude that Andy’s heart, broken by what he saw on May 17, 1974, was never the same. Trauma, like wet clay, leaves impressions that don’t fully fade. The pressure of drugs—heavy and unrelenting—only reshaped that wound deeper. To leave his heart of clay would be to finally escape the weight he carried for decades.

"See you walk, walk away / Into the night / And through the rain / Into the half-light / And through the flame"

This could be Andy’s own longing to undo what he saw—perhaps he imagined the victims of the bombings walking away, whole, rather than the brutal images of body parts and devastation he actually witnessed. Or it could be his dream of walking away from it all himself: from the streets, the addiction, the pain. To pass “through the rain” and “through the flame” is to endure—suffering, cleansing, transformation. The “half-light” is stuck between night and day, despair and hope.

Verse Three Reflection

Lyrics:

If I could through myself

Set your spirit free, I'd lead your heart away

See you break, break away

Into the light

And to the day

"If I could through myself / Set your spirit free, I'd lead your heart away / See you break, break away / Into the light / And to the day"

This line feels like Bono’s most personal plea—an expression of helpless love and anguished compassion. It’s as if he’s saying, “If I could take your pain, your trauma, your addiction—if I could carry it for you, I would.” He wants nothing more than to see Andy free: free from the haunting images of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, free from the grip of heroin, free from the isolation of surviving what others did not. And there’s another powerful layer: the imagined voices of those who died in the bombing. It’s as if they are whispering to Andy from beyond—encouraging him to live, to break free from the shadow of their deaths, to do what they could not.

To “break away into the light and to the day” is the ultimate image of redemption. Freedom. Healing. Peace.

Chorus

Lyrics:

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

To let it go

And so to fade away

To let it go

And so, fade away

Wide awake

I'm wide awake

Wide awake

I'm not sleeping

Oh, no, no, no

"To let it go / And so fade away"

For Andy, letting go of what happened on May 17, 1974—the bombings, the bodies, the trauma—comes at a cost. He can’t simply move on or forget. In order to release the weight of that day, he would have to fade away himself. The pain is so deeply embedded that detaching from it might feel like detaching from life. Perhaps that’s why he turned to drugs—not to feel good, but to disappear. To numb the memories. To fade. Not entirely die, but dissolve from the surface of his own life.

"I'm wide awake"

This refrain takes on a chilling double meaning. Andy is not sleeping—because he can’t. He’s wide awake with grief, with guilt, with flashbacks that invade both night and day. He relives the bombings in his mind, over and over. There is no rest.

It could be Bono expressing his awareness—of what Andy went through, of the larger issues of violence, addiction, and loss. Or it could be Andy’s inner voice surfacing, momentarily lucid, refusing to be lost.

But there’s also a spiritual undertone: to be wide awake is to be aware—raw, exposed, unable to hide. Whether this awakening is a curse or a chance for redemption is left unresolved. What we do know is that sleep, peace, and forgetting are beyond reach.

Verse Four Reflection

Lyrics:

If you should ask then maybe they'd

Tell you what I would say

True colors fly in blue and black

Bruised silken sky and burning flag

Colors crash, collide in bloodshot eyes

"If you should ask, then maybe they'd / Tell you what I would say"

These lines evoke a painful silence. It’s as if Andy is so overwhelmed—by trauma, grief, or guilt—that he can't speak for himself. “They” might refer to the authorities or those who witnessed his unraveling. They could speak about him, but not for him. He is voiceless, paralyzed by what he saw. 

Alternatively, this could be a spiritual or imagined appeal: If you could ask the dead—ask the victims—they might be able to say what Andy cannot. Perhaps they saw what broke him. Perhaps they understand. But even then, their voices—like his—are silent.

This line captures the impossibility of language in the face of horror. Some pain is beyond words. Some memories are too sharp to name.

"True colors fly in blue and black"

This line evokes the chaos and aftermath of the car bombings. The “blue” could signify the flashing of emergency lights or the initial clear sky—quickly overtaken by “black,” a symbol of smoke, destruction, and death. It’s not just a visual palette; it’s an emotional one—shifting from calm to catastrophe in an instant.

"Bruised silken sky and burning flag"

The sky itself becomes a victim—bruised, silken, violated by violence. The flag, burning, poses a powerful question: whose nation, whose identity, whose justice? Is it the Republic of Ireland’s tricolor or the Union Jack of Northern Ireland? Or is the burning flag symbolic of a broader loss—of innocence, unity, humanity?

"Colors crash, collide in bloodshot eyes"

These images don’t just exist in the world—they live on inside Andy’s eyes. Bloodshot, from drugs or grief or sleeplessness, his eyes carry the weight of what he saw. The colors—once vivid—are now a fractured, violent memory crashing inside him. The imagery is physical and emotional: an inner war echoing the outer one.

"If I could, you know I would... Let it go"

And yet he can’t. The desire is there—to throw it off, to let the trauma and guilt dissolve—but he’s trapped. By memory, by circumstance, by addiction. The refrain is both a plea and a resignation: If I could... but I can’t.

I know my interpretation might not match Bono’s intention exactly, and that’s okay. That’s the beauty of art—it meets us where we are. For me, Bad is more than a song. It’s a lament, a prayer, a cry for release. And every time I hear it now, I think of the people who were lost, the ones who survived, and the ones still trying to let go.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.