Acrobat Lyrics
Don't believe what you hear
Don't believe what you see
If you just close your eyes
You can feel the enemy
When I first met you, girl
You had fire in your soul
What happened to your face
Of melting snow?
Now it looks like this!
[Chorus]
And you can swallow or you can spit
You can throw it up, or choke on it
And you can dream, so dream out loud
You know that your time is coming 'round
So don't let the bastards grind you down
[Verse 2]
No, nothing makes sense
Nothing seems to fit
I know you'd hit out
If you only knew who to hit
And I'd join the movement
If there was one I could believe in
Yeah, I'd break bread and wine
If there was a church I could receive in
'Cause I need it now
To take the cup, to fill it up
To drink it slow, I can't let you go
I must be an acrobat
To talk like this and act like that
And you can dream, so dream out loud
And don't let the bastards grind you down (Oh, save me)
[Bridge]
What are we going to do now it's all been said?
No new ideas in the house, and every book has been read
[Guitar Solo]
[Chorus]
And I must be an acrobat
To talk like this and act like that
And you can dream, so dream out loud
And you can find your own way out
And you can build, and I can will
And you can call, I can't wait until
You can stash and you can seize
In dreams begin responsibilities
And I can love, and I can love
And I know that the tide is turning 'round
So don't let the bastards grind you down
About
The second to last song on Achtung Baby, it wasn’t performed live until 2018, though it was rehearsed extensively in an acoustic form prior to the third leg of the Zoo TV Tour in 1992.
Bill Flanagan covers this song in “U2 At the End of the World”.
Flanagan interpreted Achtung Baby as a whole as a modern retelling of Ulysses, where the protagonist is tempted away from domestic life and virtuous love (wife or god–Achtung is full of woman/god metaphors) by an exciting nightlife and tests how far he can go before returning home. In other parts of his book, Flanagan expands on how this story is informed by the band’s meteoric rise to success.
Acrobat, the second of the last three songs in the album, is about what happens when the protagonist’s–our Ulysses–follies end and he’s staggered back home to face the music. How do he and his “virtuous love” deal with the suffering they’ve inflicted upon one another?
Elsewhere, the song has been interpreted as U2 owning up to their own hypocrisy as they reconcile the trappings of success with the realities and expectations of day to day life.
Major themes are generally agreed to be moral confusion, hypocrisy, and alienation.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 1.Zoo Station
- 3.One
- 6.So Cruel
- 7.The Fly
- 11.Acrobat
