All I Want Is You

It is a love song, sure, but everyone writes love songs. It tells of the intensity of desire and lust, the desire to be everything to someone, when really these promises are unfulfillable. So, it comes to the question of whether we can love within our limitations, or whether it will all end when our own human weaknesses are exposed.

It's about love, but a fragile love, a love where the 'promises we make' are too grand to support. The narrator hear's all these promises from his lover, and they all sound wonderful, but they're unnecessary. He only wants her, everything else is a distraction.

That's all well and good, but The Edge and the violin are really what brings this song from mediocre to great. The musical leads parallel the story, through miniature peaks and lulls, to the stirring climax after Bono shouts "You --- all I want is you ... ", as if the person is confronting the demons and choosing between love and lust, then into the gentle but restrained denouement, which seems to signify a comfortable satisfaction with intense feeling restrained below the surface.

"Obsessive love"... isn't love at all. Bono addresses that in this song. The definition of true love is ultimate selflessness, living to make another person happy in any and every way that you can. Bono realizes that when it is the desire for another that governs us, it isn't love at all... it's lust. Infatuation is so often confused with love in our society, and U2's "All I Want is You" confronts that issue. The final stanza, "You/All I want is you (repeated)" is nearly screamed by Bono, and Edge's guitar intensifies as well, both symbolizing the desire, rage, jealousy, and potential destruction lying in wait just under the facade of lust.

Unlike most other people, when I hear this song, I don't imagine it being about obsession. The video would paint that picture more than the actual song does, but even still I have never considered this to be a song about obsession.

I've always imagined that "All I Want is You" is a pretty straighforward and simple song. The lyricist's frustration is pretty evident throughout and the outcome is a sort of haunting, raw, and beautiful love song.

I think it's about a man and a woman who are deeply in love, but both have quite different ideas of what love and a relationship are supposed to be. She believes that love is measured by material objects and she seems to be concerned with how love can benefit them as individuals while he is simply saying he doesn't care about all the glamour she seems to be caught up in. All he wants is her and their love, and everything else is trivial. The lyric of the song makes the man sound frustrated because it would seem that he can do nothing to please her and keep her happy while he is perfectly happy just being with her. So in a way, he has to jump through hoops for this woman while none of that means a damn thing to him.

It's an epic song and what I love most about it is that it's a very common relationship problem. Two people with two completely different ideas of what love is and how it should be. A very bitter sweet and beautiful song. I have to add that this is the song that got me hooked on U2. I fell madly in love with this one years and years ago.

I think snowballz and eirie nite shade pretty much sumed it up. I saw the making of this video and bono stated that it parralyzes the song, and i always thougt the trappez artist died or his love for her died. Its a beautiful, bare, and intreging song. It may be one of the greatest songs ever made(or the best) I remember when i was a little boy, crying as i watched the video. (I felt so sorry for the dwarf)but he had good taste she looked good siting on that swing I belive it's about two people that love each other very much, but are afraid to commit to one another because of all the broken promises and silly things that didn't mean much to the narrater, so he's simply saying I DONT CARE ABOUT THOSE THINGS I LOVE YOU FOR WHO YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU ARE and he felt like all they needed was eachother for their love to work out right. but she couldn't see past that so his love for her failed to exhist.

ballzofsno described this so perfectly, that there is not much to add. I'd just like to say that if I had to pick ONE song and only one, and that song would become the only piece of music that I could listen to for the rest of my life...this would be it.

This song is about a man (married/not married?) having a long affair with a married woman.

She wants to remain married to her rich husband, who offers her material things and status that the singer cannot afford but she craves. Her story (affair) must remain untold.

She promises him sexual pleasure and may really love him but really is sex that she craves with him.

A highway with no one on it Treasure just to look upon it All the riches in the night Eyes in a moon of blindness A river in a time of dryness A harbor in the tempest

But he wants all of her, without sharing. He needs all of her. But all the promises (wedding vows). All he wants is her.

This song reminds me of my summer in upstate NY. It is such timeless song and is is so much more than a love song...I think we have all come to that conclusion. It's like passion, that sometimes can't be fulfilled. Yeah.

jdappleton, I desperately wanted this song for the first dance on my wedding night, but I was over-ruled in favour of Bryan Flippin' Adams. I guess she just didn't get it the way I did. Anyway, we are separated now, so maybe next time...

All I will say is her wanting material things and me just wanting her love is just how it ended up.

hey albanyankee funny you mention this as a wedding song because its what my husband and i had for ours. a lot of people found it strange as they thought it was more fitting for a funeral! Anyway, i think what really makes this song special is lines like "your story to remain untold", to me it was like saying i dont care where you have been, what mistakes you have made, all i care about is who you are now and i love you and all i want is what you are, right here and now. thats how i feel about my husband :) and i must say that my diamonds on a ring of gold were simply the icing on an already divinely perfect cake :)

Personally, I'd like to have this song for the very last dance at my wedding reception some day. A wedding is a day on which a lot of vows are made which will almost certainly be broken at some point, given our frail humanity. I mean, honestly, "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part"? That's a lot to live up to and I'd imagine almost everyone fails to in some small way each day of their lives, even when couples "remain faithful" to each other in the sense of not committing adultery. And when those promises fail, or rather when we fail the promises, the only thing left is us in our frail humanity. When two people can continue to embrace each other in those circumstances, that's likely as close as they'll get to divine love in this life. Having never been married I have no idea what it's like to live that kind of love day in and day out, but when I hear this song I always think of how much I want to.