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At the center of every album is a musical thesis. This thesis can be the driving force behind the album, a theme that interweaves songs together, or a feeling you are left with after the very last song plays. With some albums, the thesis is easy to find. On others, it is hidden and requires you to be more than a passive listener. These reviews are not about rating an album. Instead, it is about uncovering a musical thesis.  

In Love Is All We Have Left, Bono sings “Love and love is all we have left. The only thing that can be kept. Love is all we have left.” When listening to Songs of Experience, I hear a band who has been around the block once or twice. Since 1976, this band has been producing both songs of love and protest. This album, in particular, leans heavily on the first as a guide through the latter. The rise of authoritarianism, nationalism, religion as a weapon, poverty, and nations succumbing to tribalism. This album is a request to once again hit the streets, and to do so with love in hearts.  

Within that theme of love and protest, this album also attempts to pinpoint a sense of optimism in these trying times. On Lights of Home, we hear the lines, “Free yourself to be yourself. If only you could see yourself. If only you could.” I think this is a clarion call not just for the individual, but for the collective. When we create space for tolerance and acceptance, we love. When we love ourselves, we love each other. In trying times, our ability to love and support each other may be our best weapon.

Exploring further, this album wrestles with the news on our television screens. It asks us to take a stand against injustices. In the darkness of this uphill struggle where battles are hard fought, it asks us to let love be our guide. At its deepest level, this is an album about reframing a relationship with our individual selves first and then others secondly. I think we can find evidence of this deeper theme in the song, American Soul. “There’s a moment in our life where a soul can die. And the person in a country when you believe the lie. There’s a promise in the heart of every good dream. It’s a call to action, not to fantasy.” In these lyrics, I hear an opportunity for self-reflection and an invitation to stand on the right side of history. We will get there with a little love and protest.  

Be good to each other,  

Nathan