Everything was ugly but your beautiful face

[skelter]

Everything was ugly but your beautiful face
(and it) Left me no illusion
What does this line mean to you?

When I hear the album version I don't hear the crammed 'and it', without 'and it', I think it can be phrased 2 ways:
Everything was ugly but your beautiful face
Left me no illusion

Everything was ugly
But your beautiful face left me no illusion

[Blue Silken Sky]

I start to go crazy when I try to think of lyrics like this.  I know it's not arbitrary where the artists decide to break the lines, but most lyrics lack the clarity of an end-stopped poem where punctuation lets us know which clauses go together. 

For me, this would all make sense with some punctuation.
Everything was ugly, but your beautiful face left me no illusion.
(Here it sounds like the beautiful face is not a part of the "everything."  It could be a memory he's having in the midst of everything ugly.  That memory of the beautiful face makes it impossible for him to find beauty among all the ugly stuff.)

Everything was ugly but your beautiful face, (and it) left me no illusion.
(Everything was ugly except your beautiful face, and it made it impossible for me to see everything else as anything other than ugly by comparison.)

Those are the only two meanings of the line I can sense here. 

Then again, it's possible that Bono just liked the sound of "left me no illusion" after the beautiful face part and didn't care if it was syntactically. 

[Droo]

I think trying to decipher any deep meaning to the album version of ABOY is a fruitless task.

[Blue Silken Sky]

^ Maybe.  But to me, it's kind of like one of those optical illusions where people see things differently. 

Young lady or old lady?

The subject matter needn't be profound to evoke disparate interpretations; once you've heard someone else's idea, you can never see yours as the lone meaning again.

[MLP Midnight]

I think ABOY (even if it is my most disliked U2 song) has to do with God (original huh?)

The everything is ugly but your beautiful face could relate to somebody's negative view of all that is going on in the world, and the "beautiful face" is describing what they see when looking at god.

The and it left me no illusion line could basically mean that this person looks to God as the only constant thing in their life. Everything else in their life is unpredictable, but they look to God with "no illusion" because they know God will be there, no matter the consequence.

[skelter]

Lovely lovely, keep the interpretations coming!

ABOY has some great lyrics, but can easily be misconstrued as a love song.

Another fave is "I'm not broke but you can see the cracks".
It's followed by "You can make me perfect again". The casual radio listener would likely assume it is about a romantic partner.

But I really like the idea of the song being about God, or a higher idea (of perfection? happiness?) that is not romantic. After all, not everything is sexual as Miracle Drug has told us

[skelter]

For me, this would all make sense with some punctuation.
Everything was ugly, but your beautiful face left me no illusion.
(Here it sounds like the beautiful face is not a part of the "everything."  It could be a memory he's having in the midst of everything ugly.  That memory of the beautiful face makes it impossible for him to find beauty among all the ugly stuff.)

I really like both your reasonings/explanations. I agree that the beautiful face is not part of the ugly everything. But for this explanation I quoted, shouldn't the linker be "and", not "but"

As in:

Everything was ugly
And your beautiful face
Left me no illusion (your beautiful face highlights the ugliness of everything else)

so complex but interesting!

[JoshuaTree94]

^ Maybe.  But to me, it's kind of like one of those optical illusions where people see things differently. 

Young lady or old lady?

Now I'm curious. How can you see a young lady in this?

Ahh, wait, I got it - head's turned!

[Droo]

The young woman is the only one I see at first every time I look at this.

Similarly, a crappy song is the only one I hear every time I listen to ABOY.

[skelter]

Please don't profess your opinion of a song like it's the holy writ in threads that don't ask for it.

If I step into the "Should Winter be on the next album?" thread, I fully expect and accept people professing "weakest sh** ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" about a song that is someone else's favorite, but we're just trying to analyze lyrics of All Because of You here.

[briscoetheque]

It's about God

[Fist-O]

Lovely lovely, keep the interpretations coming!

ABOY has some great lyrics, but can easily be misconstrued as a love song.

Another fave is "I'm not broke but you can see the cracks".
It's followed by "You can make me perfect again". The casual radio listener would likely assume it is about a romantic partner.

But I really like the idea of the song being about God, or a higher idea (of perfection? happiness?) that is not romantic. After all, not everything is sexual as Miracle Drug has told us

I think Bono made his 'fish in the sand' with that song.

[skelter]

^What's fish in the sand?

[Fist-O]

^What's fish in the sand?

http://www.atu2.com/lyrics/biblerefs.html