Reception
"Love Is Blindness" was favourably received by critics. Uncut contributor Gavin Martin rated the song five stars, calling it "rapturous and unsettling." 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." Third Way reviewer Roland Howard described it as "haunting and melodic", believing it to be about the loss of virginity. Music journalist Bill Wyman said The Edge's guitar playing on the song sounded like a "dentist's drill". 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." 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."
Greg Potter of The Vancouver Sun believed it to be a "dour closer" that was "riddled with images of self-doubt and uncertainty". A critic for the Waterloo Region Record said it was "hardly great U2, but U2 closers have always been anti- climactic." Writing for the Boston Herald, Romandetta called it a "broken-hearted " that was "gentle" and "subdued". 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 to tormented love". 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. The Edge called it "a great end to the album and probably one of Bono's finest lyrics." Bono said, "The bass sounds like liquid at the centre of the earth, a kind of molten lava bass sound." Describing The Edge's guitar playing, he said, "It's incredible."
Read more about this topic: Love Is Blindness
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)