Love Is Blindness
Originally intending to give the song to singer Nina Simone, the band decided to keep it for Achtung Baby after playing it together.
"[7] The Edge explained that travelling to Berlin to write and record provided him with an escape from his failing marriage: "I was disappearing into the music for a different reason.
According to Hal Leonard Corporation's sheet music published at Musicnotes.com, it is played in a 6/4 time signature at a tempo of 48 beats per minute in a key of B-flat minor.
U2 biographer Bill Flanagan credits Bono's habit of keeping his lyrics "in flux until the last minute" with providing a narrative coherence to the album.
[11] Flanagan interpreted Achtung Baby as using the moon as a metaphor for a dark woman seducing the singer away from his virtuous love, the sun; he is tempted away from domestic life by an exciting nightlife and tests how far he can go before returning home.
[12] For Flanagan, the final three songs on Achtung Baby—"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)", "Acrobat", and "Love Is Blindness"—are about how the couple deal with the suffering they have forced on each other.
"[6] He wrote, "With its stark, churchlike organ intro, pulsating bass synth and guitar reverb stretched into a hallucinatory squall, it brilliantly describes the discord and dread that provide a constant undertow to Achtung Baby.
[6] Author Atara Stein wrote that the song "suggests that love can operate only through a willful self-deception, a voluntary surrender to what one knows is an illusion.
[14] Hot Press editor Niall Stokes wrote that the song "takes us back – again – to the shadowy world of deceit, infidelity, and betrayal.
"[6] Hot Press editor Niall Stokes said, "its sentiments made it the perfect conclusion to Achtung Baby, describing the Edge's playing as "a mournful, ejaculatory guitar solo, stabbing out thick emotional blues notes that linger and then fall away like tears.
[16] Jon Pareles of The New York Times described it as "a kind of summation", calling it "an elegy that compares love to 'drowning in a deep well' and wishes for it anyway.
"[17] Geoffrey Himes of The Washington Post wrote that it has "a gospel quality, as swooning synth parts are set against block piano chords, and Bono acknowledges that mismatched lovers will suffer their inevitable fate.
[21] George Varga of The San Diego Union-Tribune said it was one of the most interesting tracks on the albums, calling it a "spare, David Bowie-like [ode] to tormented love".
[22] Michael Ross of The Sunday Times and James Healy of The San Diego Union-Tribune lamented that U2 did not include it on the compilation album The Best of 1990–2000.
"[8] "Love Is Blindness" debuted on 29 February 1992 in Lakeland, Florida, on the opening night of the Zoo TV Tour, where it closed the concert.
[26] Beginning on the third leg of the tour it was followed by a cover of the Elvis Presley song "Can't Help Falling in Love" and, on one occasion, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?".
[25][29] Following the conclusion of the Zoo TV Tour, "Love Is Blindness" went on almost total hiatus from live concerts for many years, only being performed twice over nearly three decades.
The song concluded the main set of the concerts, and during performances the venue LED's screen was mostly a solid blue hue before it began to fill up with the silhouettes of insects until it was nearly blacked out completely.
[34] U2 concert historian Pimm Jal de la Parra called the live rendition "sultry, as the screens show a constellation map, giving the crowd a feeling of floating across the universe by the way it moves, transmitting a mood of distance and loneliness that corresponds with the nature of the song.
"[35] Julie Romandetta of the Boston Herald believed it to be an anticlimactic finish to the concert, calling the song "low-key" and saying "U2 soared for more than 90 minutes, but left with a whimper, instead of a bang.
[37] Writing for The Arizona Daily Star, Gene Armstrong called it an "achingly romantic closing tune", describing the Edge's solo as "especially tender".
[48] A rendition by Jack White appears on the 2011 tribute album AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered, and as the B-side of his own single, "Sixteen Saltines".
The video was filmed in Nov. 2014 in Los Angeles and released as part of the Team Chloe Dance Project on Lukasiak's YouTube channel.[49].
[citation needed] In 2016, singer Lee-La Baum (of the band The Damn Truth) covered the song for a television commercial for Yves Saint Laurent's Mon Paris.
