The Chords Stand Still; the Song Keeps Moving

Driving the neighbours downtown

Oddly enough, I don’t remember the first time I heard “With or Without You”, but I’m sure it wasn’t around the time it was released. What I do recall is driving two neighbours downtown to go to the U2 concert at BC Place in 1987, and it was one of the first times I had realized how big a band U2 was. I had heard of the band before, but I was never conscious of hearing their music. That probably came sometime in the 1990s, when I first consciously heard U2.

I often hear music on the radio, in the grocery store, or in all sorts of places in the background, and we’re never really conscious of what it is. That turns out to be a good way into this song, because one of the central features in it is something you barely notice.

Four chords, and a wick

The song never leaves the safety of its four-chord orbit: D, A, Bm and G, round and round. (This little collection of vertical simultaneities displays a predilection for going round and round and round… and round.) The bass is following the chord progression exactly — no pedal there. The held thing is in the middle of the sound: an unstopping figure, D–D–D–D–A, over and over — the DX7 line, sitting among the mid-range guitars. Strictly it’s an ostinato, but it doesn’t take away from the pedal effect — or the reality.

This song begins with a rippling, bell-like synthesizer, played on a DX7 by Brian Eno, as well as layered guitars. What emerges is a constant tonic pedal throughout, sitting in the middle of the texture from beginning to end as it gets thicker and more layers are added.

It’s kind of like a wick for a candle — that’s a pretty important element. It’s really just the physical structure that holds all the wax in place, but other than at the very top of the candle, it’s not particularly visibly important.

Layer by layer

The song grows slowly from a very quiet, thin texture in the beginning. There are more and more layers with every verse. Just before two minutes, the energy picks up and a new guitar pattern comes in. It’s kind of like an Aeolian pattern that plays over and over, not necessarily agreeing with the chords floating underneath. But what it actually does is reinforce this kind of mysterious tonality that is never really clear — partly because of that tonic pedal, which has been running since the beginning.

That is the point where Bono is singing “and you give yourself away”. But the peak energy and the main drive comes about a minute later, around 3:03, when the voice opens right up — certainly in the vocal part, because it drops off after that. Then we get a long instrumental refrain fading out, recalling the earlier part of the song before the vocals came in. It’s very spacey and light, and causes almost a nostalgic effect.

Not a Beethoven sonata

Music is more than four chords looping, and I have no doubt that some people would say it’s a boring song if only for that. But I think what U2 has done here is take a small amount of material and make it work, because it’s simply not the repetition of four chords. It’s a whole evolution of texture, with a dramatic narrative and a delicate sense of colour and balance within the whole song itself.

Now, if it doesn’t develop like a Beethoven sonata, well, that’s because it’s not a Beethoven sonata. Its development is in other areas — specifically timbre and texture. There are certainly many songs that are not very interesting that only have four chords, or three chords, or two chords for that matter. But it is a poor carpenter who blames his tools. If this song is to be interpreted as “simple”, then I would say, in my experience, doing something simple of high quality and interest is one of the most challenging tasks for any composer or artist.

The wick

What remained? Even though it seems to have gone on quite a journey with only four chords, the song has never left the world of its own central creation. The held D in the middle of the sound remains the wick of the song, running constantly through the stationary four-chord skeleton, while the layers, the voice, the guitar that doesn’t quite agree — are the sonic wax melting and dripping around it.

This piece is a companion to Chapter 1.7, “Drones, Pedals and Layers.” The chapter names what you hear here — pedals, ostinatos and the layers of a record — and its activity Keep one bass note lets you hold one note under changing chords and hear what it does.

→ Read Chapter 1.7, “Drones, Pedals and Layers”
→ Try the activities

First published on Substack, 21 October 2026. This is the site’s archive copy.