Twilight

The entire Boy album is immortal to me. I began listening to U2 as a young teenager. Only a few years younger than they were when they wrote the Boy album. Because I first heard this song and that album in that particular period of my life, I related to some of the lyrics pretty strongly.

Like Bono when he wrote these lyrics, I was also at a point in my life when I was both a child and an adult. A strange and mystifying time where nothing is concrete and everything is changing.

Try to think back to when you were that age and how you felt and how you saw the world around you and then read the "Twilight" lyrics or listen to the song again. Now try to imagine that you're a teenager who's mind and body is changing in a way you don't understand and you're also dealing with the loss of your mother, possibly the most important relationship you had at that age.

This song then makes perfect sense. He's growing. He's trying to understand the things that are happening to him and he compares the changes coming about within himself to the changes between night and day. Somehow he feels caught in between one and the other.

As for the old man in this song, it's anyone's guess. It could be Bono's grandfather who passed on when he was 14, or it could be just about anyone. One thing that really stands out to me though is that Bono seeks knowledge from this person. It's almost as if Bono is hiding some kind of adolescent secret in this song and he desperately wants to confide in this "old man" and seek wisdom. If it is his grandfather he's referring to, this would make perfect sense, as his grandfather is dead and that was a person Bono felt he could really talk to. Perhaps, "His eyes are closed but I see something" refers to his grandpa being dead but Bono still longing for his advice or even praying to him for guidance.

Just a thought...

Maybe it's about growing up and how it sneeks up on you. ... in the dark. Just a guess.

i think this song is about elders pasing on lessons on to the younger generations..." look into his eyes They're closed but I see something" ; at the same time i also think its about death...the old man dying, and trying to hide it from the boy, but the boy learns about it and it makes him a man

Sounds like the theme song for NAMBLA to me. "In the shadow, boy meets man."

And no, I'm not just making a joke. It sounds like a boy gets molested by a man and is forever shaken by the event.

love this song, its great.

Great song. Does anyone have any idea what its all about?

Maybe it's about growing up and how it sneeks up on you. ... in the dark. Just a guess.

....in the dusk of life....really the dawn of life. So they took poetic liscense, do we care?

Brilliant how U2 started it's career with Boy. They understood they really didn't understand.

I'd guess they lifted the idea from the Beatles John Lennon. Girl 1963 ----woman 1980

Pencilneck, you are right on.

As in most of U2's lyrics, the images are creative enough that they can invoke different meanings to different people, but I can't believe the second verse could mean anything else.

Curiously, in Niall Stokes' book about how all U2 songs were about some sort of sex he decided this one was about the Reagan administration.

This song is about a boy losing his innocence...

or in other words, becoming a man.