Album: Zooropa (1993)

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Songfacts®:

• The lyrics are based on a home video of Bono's mother where she is wearing lemon (yellow). She died when Bono was 14. "I have very few memories of my mother because my father never talked about her after she died," Bono writes in the band bio U2 by U2. "So it was a very strange experience to receive, in the post, from a very distant relative, Super 8 footage of my mother, aged 24, younger than me, playing a game of rounders in slow motion. This beautiful, young Irish girl, with a narrow waist, curvaceous figure, dark gypsy hair. The film was early color and it looked extraordinary. It was a wedding, where she was the maid of honor in this beautiful lemon dress."
  
  Of the lyrics Bono says, "There were two things going on at once, memory and loss, a portrait of a girl in a shimmering lemon dress that kept it sexy and playful and the pathos of a man separated from the things he loves... 'Lemon' is about leaving home, versus not leaving home."
• Video was based on the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer who used a series of still cameras to create "stop-action" video of motion. He is famous for a series of shots at a racetrack that proved horses do at times run with all 4 legs in the air.
• On their Popmart tour, the band came out of a giant lemon.

Comments: 9

• Dana Boos from Buffalo, Ny UsaI love Lemon and the video is perfection. This beautiful song has haunted ne, in a beautiful soulful way since it was originally released.
  
  At this horrible point (essentially homeless) in my life, I find this amazing song therapeutic. I watch Lemon every morning at the start of my day. It is meditative to me.
  
  Thank you,
  
  Bravo, brilliant Bono and U2.
• Chris from Germany The video is a hommage to Edward Muybridge one of the pioneers of moving pictures and Moving Pictures are also named by Bono on that song.
• Marius from LüneburgThis song is very controversial. Sometimes I absolutly dislike it and trying to avoid it. Sometimes I like the electronic elements and could listen to it for hours. But if you are driving through the lemon landscape in greece on a sunny, beautiful day "Lemon" is THE song ;)
• James from Westchester, EnglandIf you listen very closely, it sounds like someone is rocking back and forth on an old rocking chair throughout the song. I am sure that is probably some sort of percussion instrument.
• Nathan from Defiance, OhThis songs on this album were not originally supposed to be released to the public. The band was just experimenting, and someone got the idea to record it. It wound up being critically acclaimed, but the album is really a complete accident.
• Paul from Worcs, EnglandVery interesting song, both lyrically and musically. it had a big impact on me the first time I saw it and then when I saw the video I was even more impressed. Very strange and freaky.
• Ale from Necochea, ArgentinaI like to think it's not just an hipnotic U2's techno-pop period song. It's waaaaay too good to say that.
• Rich from Commack, NyI have to agree with Justin, except the first minute hating part. I love every minute, every digitally recorded second of it. How can you NOT like Lemon?
• Justin from Ojai, CaA very, very good, under-rated and relatively unknown song. Hated the first minute or so, but then I realized what it was all about. For all those U2 fans who haven't heard it, I highly recommend listening to it.

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