"Where the Streets Have No Name" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the opening track from their 1987 album The Joshua Tree and was released as the album's third single in August 1987. The song's hook is a repeating guitar arpeggio using a delay effect, played during the song's introduction and again at the end. Lead vocalist Bono wrote the lyrics in response to the notion that one can predict a person's religion and income based on the street where they live, particularly in Belfast. During the band's difficulties recording the song, producer Brian Eno considered erasing the song's tapes to have them start from scratch.
"Where the Streets Have No Name" was praised by critics and became a commercial success, peaking at number thirteen on the US Billboard Hot 100, number fourteen in Canada, number ten in the Netherlands, and number four on the UK Singles Chart. The song has remained a staple of their live act since the song debuted in 1987 on The Joshua Tree Tour. The song was performed on a Los Angeles rooftop for the filming of its music video, which won the Grammy Award for Best Performance Music Video at the 31st Annual Grammy Awards.
Writing and recording The music for "Where the Streets Have No Name" originated from a demo that guitarist The Edge composed the night before U2 resumed The Joshua Tree sessions. In an upstairs room at Melbeach House—his newly purchased home—he used a four-track tape machine to record an arrangement of keyboards, bass, guitar, and a drum machine. Realising that the album sessions were approaching the end and that the band were short on exceptional live songs, he wanted to "conjure up the ultimate U2 live-song", so he imagined what he would like to hear at a future U2 show if he were a fan.McCormick (2006), pp. 184-185 After finishing the rough mix, he felt he had come up with "the most amazing guitar part and song of [his] life". With no one in the house to share the demo with, he recalls dancing around and punching the air in celebration.
Although the band liked the demo, it was difficult for them to record the song. Bassist Adam Clayton said, "At the time it sounded like a foreign language, whereas now we understand how it works". The arrangement, with two time signature shifts and frequent chord changes, was rehearsed many times, but the group struggled to get a performance they liked. According to co-producer Daniel Lanois, "that was the science project song. I remember having this massive schoolhouse blackboard, as we call them. I was holding a pointer, like a college professor, walking the band through the chord changes like a fucking nerd. It was ridiculous." Co-producer Brian Eno estimates that half of the album sessions were spent trying to record a suitable version of "Where the Streets Have No Name". The band worked on a single take for weeks, but as Eno explained, that particular version had a lot of problems with it and the group continued trying to fix it up. Through all of their work, they had gradually replaced each instrument take until nothing remained from the original performance.
So much time had been spent on "screwdriver work" that Eno thought it would be best to start from scratch. His idea was to "stage an accident" and have the song's tapes erased. He said that this was not to force abandonment of the song, but rather that it would be more effective to start again with a fresh performance. At one point, Eno had the tapes cued up and ready to be recorded over, but this erasure never took place; according to engineer Flood, fellow engineer Pat McCarthy returned to the control room and upon seeing Eno ready to erase the tapes, dropped the tray of tea he was carrying and physically restrained Eno.
The studio version of the song was compiled from several different takes. It was one of several songs mixed by Steve Lillywhite in the final months of recording The Joshua Tree.McGee (2008), p. 98 Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. later said of the song, "It took so long to get that song right, it was difficult for us to make any sense of it. It only became a truly great song through playing live. On the record, musically, it's not half the song it is live."
Composition
"Where the Streets Have No Name" is played in the key of D major at a tempo of 126 beats per minute. Note: Software required to view the page. The introduction and outro are played in a time signature, while the remainder of the song is in a common signature. Note: Software required to view the page. The song opens with an instrumental section, starting with chorale-like sustained synthesiser notes. The guitar fades in after 40 seconds; this part consists of a repeated "chiming" six-note arpeggio. A "dotted eighth" delay effect is used to "play" each note in the arpeggio twice, thus creating a rich sound. The bass and drums enter at 1:10.
The introduction, following a I–IV–I–IV–vi–V–I chord progression, creates a "wall of sound", as described by Mark Butler, against which the vocals emerge after nearly two minutes. The guitar part played for the remainder of the song features The Edge strumming percussive sixteenth notes. The bass and drums continue in regular eighth and sixteenth notes, respectively, while Bono's vocal performance, in contrast, varies greatly in its timbre, ("he sighs; he moans; he grunts; he exhales audibly; he allows his voice to crack") as well as timing by his usage of rubato to slightly offset the notes he sings from the beat.
This development reaches a climax during the first chorus at the line "burning down love" (A–G–F–D); the melody progresses through a series of scale degrees that lead to the highest note in the song, the A4 at "burning". In later choruses, Bono sings "blown by the wind" with the same melody, stretching the same note even longer. After the third chorus, the song's outro is played, the instrumentation reverting to the same state as it was in the introduction, with a six-note guitar arpeggio played against sustained synthesiser notes.
Lyrics The lyrics were inspired by a story that Bono heard about Belfast, Northern Ireland, where a person's religion and income were evident by the street on which they lived. He contrasted this with the anonymity he felt when visiting Ethiopia, saying: "the guy in the song recognizes this contrast and thinks about a world where there aren't such divisions, a place where the streets have no name. To me, that's the way a great rock 'n' roll concert should be: a place where everyone comes together... Maybe that's the dream of all art: to break down the barriers and the divisions between people and touch upon the things that matter the most to us all." Bono wrote the lyrics while on a humanitarian visit to Ethiopia with his wife, Ali Hewson; he first wrote them down on an airsickness bag while staying in a village.
According to him, the song is ostensibly about "Transcendence, elevation, whatever you want to call it." Bono, who compared many of his lyrics prior to The Joshua Tree to "sketches", said that "'Where the Streets Have No Name' is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it's a sketch—I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling."
The open-ended nature of the lyrics has led to many interpretations. Journalist Michael Campbell believed the lyrics send "a message of hope" and wish for a "world that is not divided by class, wealth, race, or any other arbitrary criterion".Campbell, Brody (2007), p. 433 With regard to the place Bono was referring to in the song, he said, "I'm not sure, really, about that. I used to think it was Belfast..." Journalist Niall Stokes believes the title was influenced by Bono's and his wife Ali's visit to Ethiopia as volunteer aid-workers. Bono has expressed mixed opinions about the open-ended lyrics: "I can look at it now and recognize that [the song] has one of the most banal couplets in the history of pop music. But it also contains some of the biggest ideas. In a curious way, that seems to work. If you get any way heavy about these things, you don't communicate. But if you're flip or throwaway about it, then you do. That's one of the paradoxes I've come to terms with."Stokes (2005), p. 64
In a 2017 interview, Bono said he still felt that the song's lyrics were incomplete, stating "lyrically it's just a sketch and I was going to go back and write it out". He expressed regret for rhyming "hide" with "inside". However, the Edge disagreed with his comments, stating that he loves the song and that Bono is "very hard on himself". Eno responded by commending the "incomplete" lyrics because he feels "they allow the listener to finish them".
Release Originally, the third single from The Joshua Tree was meant to be the song "Red Hill Mining Town", but "Where the Streets Have No Name" was released instead, in August 1987. The single was released on 7-inch, 12-inch, cassette and CD single formats. Three B-sides were featured on the single, including "Race Against Time", "Silver and Gold", and "Sweetest Thing", except for the 7-inch release, which only featured the latter two tracks. The 12-inch single featured "Race Against Time" on side A of the record (despite being a "B-side"), and the cassette single featured all four tracks on both sides of the tape. Although not as successful as the album's first two singles, the song did chart well. In the U.S., the song peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 11 on the Album Rock Tracks charts. The song reached number four on the UK Singles Chart, and it topped the Irish Singles Chart.
Music video
The video opens with an aerial shot of a city block in Downtown Los Angeles, with voice-overs from radio DJs saying U2 will be filming a music video in public, and large crowds are expected to be in attendance. Police show up to the set and inform the band's crew of the security issue that the video shoot is causing. Two minutes into the video, U2 perform "Where the Streets Have No Name" atop the roof of a one-story building, with large crowds of people in the audience on the adjacent streets. Towards the end of the song, Bono informs the crowd that the video shoot is being shut down, which is met by booing from the crowd, while police officers approach the roof.
The video for "Where the Streets Have No Name" was directed by Meiert Avis and produced by Michael Hamlyn and Ben Dossett. The band attracted over 1,000 people during the video's filming, which took place on the rooftop of a liquor store at 7th Street and Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles on 27 March 1987.McGee (2008), p. 101 The band's performance on a rooftop in a public place was a reference to the Beatles' final concert, as depicted in the 1970 film Let It Be.de la Parra (2003), p. 79
During the shoot U2 played an eight-song set, which included four performances of "Where the Streets Have No Name". Prior to filming, a week was spent reinforcing the roof of the liquor store to ensure that it would not collapse if it were to be intruded by a group of fans. A backup generator was put on the roof so the shooting could continue in the event that the authorities shut off the power on the primary generator, which happened during filming.