About The Song
“All I Want Is You” is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the final track on their 1988 album, Rattle and Hum, and was released as its fourth and final single on 12 June 1989. It also appears in the Rattle and Hum film, playing over the closing credits.
“All I Want Is You” was released in the UK as a single on 12 June 1989. The B-side featured covers of The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody”, and a cover of Love Affair’s “Everlasting Love”. It reached number 4 in the UK charts and number 2 in Australia, number 12 on the Dutch Top 40, but only reached number 67 and number 83 in the Canadian and American charts, respectively. It appeared on the soundtrack for the 1994 film Reality Bites. The popularity of the song in the film led to a re-release in 1994 where it reached number 38 in the U.S. Top 40 Mainstream charts. The single was rereleased in the Netherlands with “Everlasting Love” now being the A-side. “Everlasting Love” reached number 10 in the Dutch Charts, in January 1990. In 2004, it was ranked number 9 inEntertainment Weekly’s list of “The 50 Greatest Love Songs”.
String arrangements on the song are by Van Dyke Parks. Benmont Tench is credited for keyboards, though he said in an interview in The Boston Globe in 2014: “I couldn’t figure out what to play because the song seemed complete, and eventually the Edge said, ‘Why don’t you play this little figure?’ and it’s in there somewhere buried in the mix and as a result everyone always credits me with having played with U2.”
It is also featured during an episode of Hindsight and the final scenes of the 2011 film Contagion. The song “October” appears on the compilation album The Best of 1980–1990 as a hidden track encoded within the track for “All I Want Is You” following about a minute of silence.
Director Meiert Avis shot the promotional video in the town of Ostia, outside Rome on 18 April 1989. Written by Barry Devlin, the video takes an unusual cinematic approach to the song, with U2 band members making only brief cameo appearances. The video tells the story of a person with dwarfism, played by Paolo Risi, who falls in love with a trapeze artist, played by Paola Rinaldi, one of whom apparently dies towards the end. While there is disagreement amongst fans about exactly who has died, The Edge was quoted as saying it is the trapeze artist who dies.
The video pays homage to Fellini, who was shooting his last movie, La voce della luna, only a few miles away from the U2 set, and also to Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks
Video
Lyrics
You say you want
Diamonds on a ring of gold
You say you want
Your story to remain untold
But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
You say you’ll give me
A highway with no one on it
Treasure just to look upon it
All the riches in the night
You say you’ll give me
Eyes in a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbor in the tempest
But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
You say you want
Your love to work out right
To last with me through the night
You say you want
Diamonds on a ring of gold
Your story to remain untold
Your love not to grow cold
All the promises we break
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
You all I want is
You all I want is
You all I want is
You