The Meaning Behind “All I Want Is You” by U2

October 24, 2023 5:05 pm

Bono was 28 years old when he learned his wife, Ali Hewson, was pregnant with the couple’s first child.

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“I was swinging from the stars,” he wrote in his 2022 memoir, Surrender. “Actually, more like hanging from them. I was terrified.”

Although he’d been married for six years, Bono still felt like an adolescent. He’s spent the past decade on the road, fronting U2 with a shout-it-to-the-rafters voice that added humanity to the band’s otherworldly soundscapes. He was capable of convincing entire stadiums to sing along with him, but was he capable of being a good father?

“If I wanted to raise children,” he added in Surrender, “I still had some growing up to do myself.”

The Inspiration of Unconditional Love

It was Ali who ultimately eased Bono’s mind. “[She] told me that she loved all of me, that even the troubled parts of my soul were her delight,” he wrote. “She didn’t need to be anyone else. She loved me.”

Grateful and inspired, Bono wrote “All I Want Is You” for his wife. The song was released on Rattle and Hum, an album that was billed as U2’s exploration of American roots music. Songs like “Desire” and “When Love Comes to Town” certainly fit that description, but “All I Want Is You” stood apart from the bluesy, gospel-influenced songs that filled Rattle and Hum‘s track list. The chord progression was simple, even hymn-like, while the production itself was spacious and grand, thanks to master arranger Van Dyke Parks’ orchestral string production.

At the center of the song stood Bono’s lyrics, which tackled big topics like love, commitment, and broken promises. You say you’ll give me eyes in the moon of blindness / A river in a time of dryness / A harbor in the tempest, Bono sings during the second verse. These pledges are difficult to fulfill, of course, and the chorus acknowledges the impossibility of it all. All the promises we make from the cradle to the grave / When all I want is you, goes the song’s familiar refrain.

Bono’s Not Singing the Song

“All I Want Is You” is often misinterpreted. At the time of its release, U2 didn’t help clarify the song’s message, and the accompanying music might have added to the confusion. Directed by Meiert Avis, who’d been working with U2 since the early 1980s, the video showcased the unlikely love affair between two members of a traveling circus: a man with dwarfism and a female trapeze artist. It was a beautiful clip with black-and-white cinematography, but the story it told was unrelated to the actual song. The crux of Bono’s lyrics remained unclear.

Surrender, which was released more than 30 years after the song itself, shed new light on “All I Want Is You.”

“I put [Ali] as the protagonist,” Bono explained in the memoir. “She is the singer of the song. It became one of our most enduring songs and the opposite of pretty much everyone’s reading of it.”

That unexpected switch between artist and audience makes “All I Want Is You” even more powerful. Bono croons most of the song in his lower register before singing the song’s title—You, all I want is you, all I want is you—in an open-throated howl. The Edge’s guitar rings and reverberates, Van Dyke Parks’ orchestra swells and swoons, and Bono’s lyrics aim straight for the heart.

“All I Want Is You” isn’t really a song about his own experience. It’s a song about his wife’s attempts to soothe her husband’s struggles. He can make all the impossible promises he wants—jewels, treasure, a highway that’s miraculously clear of traffic—but that’s not the way she wants to be wooed. She doesn’t need material goods. She just needs him.

Bono and Ali Hewson became parents on May 10, 1989, when Ali gave birth to the couple’s first daughter, Jordan. “All I Want Is You” was released one month later as a single. At six minutes and thirty seconds, it was the longest song on any U2 album until 1993, when Zooropa‘s “Lemon” rode a disco groove for nearly seven minutes. Like the Hewsons’ marriage, “All I Want Is You” has endured over the decades, with the band regularly performing it in concert.

Hear the Definitive Live Version

For the definitive live version, check out the band’s performance at Slane Castle—where The Unforgettable Fire was partially recorded—on September 1, 2001. Bono’s father had died one week before the gig, and Ireland’s football team had triumphed over the Netherlands just a few hours before showtime, guaranteeing the country a spot in the FIFA World Cup Intercontinental Play-off.

Needless to say, the mood was emotionally charged—both within the band and amongst the audience’s 80,000 fans—and the performance that followed was spellbinding, with U2 segueing from “All I Want Is You” into “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images

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