So guys I just wanted to share with you an eye opening and heartbreaking experience I just had in the last couple of days related to this song.
It's about me and my mother. For the last two weeks she has been sick, and it is hard for me because I am studying away from home, in Canada.
She told me that she has been having tremendous headaches that just won't go away. She knows I love U2, and she used to be a singer. So to make her feel better, I told her to listen to Iris (hold me close), because it is about a Mother and Son relationship.
I know that Bono's mother, Iris, passed away because of a brain aneurisma.
So this was one of my concerns with my mother, aside from cancer, of which her father died from.
Those two ideas were in my head, and of course the other side of me which pushed me to think positively. To know that life is like that, that we have to keep going, and that all bad things that happen are to build your character.
But most importantly, that there are things we just cannot control.
Yesterday morning, she had an MRI Exam because the doctors had no idea what was happening. My parents stayed at the hospital the whole day, and I had no idea of that. I got a call at 5:45pm, in the middle of my class.
It was my father, he told me he wanted to to FaceTime asap. I knew instantly that something really bad came out of that MRI Exam.
So I finish my class,get to my room, call my father, and there they are in the screen.
My mother, my father and my little sister, explaining to me that the doctors have to do an emergency surgery because she was going to have an aneurisma at any moment.
My mother was calm, she told me she had been nice to everyone all the day. Smiling and sharing love, enjoying every moment. She is like that, she has a light that never goes out. It was hard talking about death with her. I tried not to cry, told her how much I loved her and asked for her forgiveness for all the moments I have been a bad son. She was proud and gave me advices, she was positive and shining her light on me.
I asked her if she liked the song, she replied "I loved it" "Such beautiful words from you" .
They are not my words, they are Bono's. But I thought those were the right words for her to listen. She has no idea Bono's mother died of an aneurisma, I do not know if it was a coincidence or some of live's mysteries.
But the only thing I know is that I love her and that her light will never go out. I am holding her closer than ever.
The vocal melody is still pretty clearly unfinished, but to be honest it sounds pretty unfinished in the final song. I like some of the lyrical differences, but overall Iris has the better lyrics. It’s interesting that the opening chant/wail/whatever vocals from Iris were already in place this early. The guy who posted the video says this is from 2013 so it’s pretty late in the song’s development, yet the chorus isn’t present at all.
Pretty freaking lazy remix though, even for U2 standards. Avicii just added the most generic sounding EDM beat and arpeggios lol.
makes me think that Chris Martin's involvement in Iris was this early. not vocally in the mix, but at least as a soundboard in U2's room (vigorously taking notes and secretly texting them to johnny)
because it's an odd coincidence, that mere months after this demo (by May 2014) Coldplay would release Sky Full of Stars... blatant EDM, produced by Avicii, and lyrically about stars...
Larry's beat sounds a bit like Invisible? 