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New Year's Day

Date: Jan 01 2007

Intro

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2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

Happy New Year! On this, the first day of 2007, we look to one of the all-time greatest pop singles: New Year’s Day by U2. The song was the band’s first hit single, off of the album War, which came out in 1983. The song is a love song with political undertones.

Mason starts to talk about this song with Amanda, but then he digresses. Listen to him tell Amanda how U2’s music is finding its way into some surprising places.

Dialog

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Mason

Amanda

Mason: All is quiet on… Yeah, I was doing that at karaoke, the… New Year’s Day, um, you know, the U2 song?

Amanda: Yeah.

Mason: I was preparing ‘cause, like, I figured I’m gonna go on a New Year’s trip and I gonna wake everybody up… and they’re gonna be hung over... by blasting New Year’s Day. It’s gonna be awesome.

Amanda: Everybody knows that song.

Mason: Um, but U2’s been kinda on my brain ‘cause I got a buddy of mine down in Salem and he just did this thing with his church called the U2charists.

Amanda: Ok, tell me more.

Mason: Uh, which is playing on the word Eucharist, which I don’t really even know what that means.

Amanda: I don’t either.

Mason: But it’s, like… So you know, U2, they’re a fairly religious band, Irish Catholic and all that. Bono’s got, you know, on the other side of his political stuff is his religious stuff.

Amanda: Right.

Mason: So it’s kinda taking the most religious of U2’s songs and incorporating them into an actual service and, like, it’s aimed to get the youth more involved in the church. And my friend actually did it with a live band ‘cause he plays keyboard and sings and got some other friends, uh, to do it and they went and rocked the church for an afternoon I guess.

Amanda: And it’s a great idea.

Mason: I suppose.

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Discussion

Mason says he’s going on a trip with friends over New Year’s. He plans to wake everyone up with the song New Year’s Day. His friends will be hung over because New Year’s Day is the morning after New Year’s Eve, a night that involves excessive drinking for many.

Mason has a friend who is playing U2’s music at his church. It’s true. Many churches are using U2’s music to get young people interested. The U2charists also raise awareness within the church community about the global issues that Bono is involved with, like AIDS in Africa.

Do you like the song New Year’s Day?