Rite About Time - New Year's Day

I began 2009 by listening to U2’s “New Year’s Day” – my first song of every new year for the past 25 years. Ian also joined in this rite – when I woke up, he’d already been up and had the track cued up on our stereo. It’s always been one of my favorite U2 songs – I love the driving beat, Edge’s ringing guitar and melodic piano lines, and Bono’s soaring vocals. We listened to it before breakfast, and then to the rest of U2’s “Best of 1980 – 1990” CD.

January 1, 1984 was the first time I played the song for the new year. I had just come home the night before, after living for three years in Boston. I had been a student at Northeastern University for three semesters, until my financial aid ran out. I stayed on for another year and a half, working jobs in retail stores and nightclubs, and for a music agency; and living in half a dozen apartments, first with a boyfriend, and then with different roommates. I’d hoped to save up money to go back to school, at least part-time, but I was actually just scraping by. My last roommate moved out suddenly in December ’83 (she’d met a guy and was staying at his place) and I didn’t have time to find a new roommate and couldn’t afford the rent on my own. So my parents and sister helped me move back on New Year’s Eve. I remember sitting in the back seat of my dad’s car, feeling dejected, already missing Boston and wanting to somehow get back there as soon as I could. The next day, I pulled out my vinyl copy of “War,” and set the stereo needle on “New Year’s Day” – the first song of the year. I thought of seeing U2’s amazing live show at the Orpheum Theatre, just months before. The song helped me to still feel connected to Boston and its music scene that I’d become a small part of. Listening to the lyrics, “I… I will begin again,” I felt like I could start over, too.

My 21-year-old self would probably be appalled that I never did move back to Boston. I was going to move back that summer, but my plans fell through. I still hoped to return, though, and played “New Year’s Day,” on January 1, ’85 as a motivator. But instead, I started over again back here in the Hudson Valley, hanging out with new friends at Berties, a club where the local music scene finally caught up to the big cities’. I worked at several different jobs and took classes at Dutchess Community College. As I started to feel rooted here, I slowly grew to appreciate living in the Hudson Valley again. And now it feels like home once more.

25 years later, U2 is still one of the biggest and most important bands in music. Their early songs seem just as relevant as their current hits. As a longtime fan, it’s been great to see them develop musically, socially and politically over the years, and to hear their influence on modern bands, like Coldplay and Keane. And at the start of each new year, I still play “New Year’s Day,” as a rite to usher in the year to come, and to focus on the possibility that “I… I will begin again.” But now I see it as more of an idea about the hope for renewal, on a personal and also global level, no matter what the odds may be. “New Year’s Day” will always be my first song of every new year.