Random U2 Quote

"If a U2 show is going askew, as it can, the one song you can rely on to get that room back is 'Where the Streets Have No Name.'" Bono, 2004

Third single of "The Joshua Tree" album m(1987) is a powerful song and it became a staple of live shows. Its inaugural performance 2 April 1987 in Temple, Arizona.

Bono was inspired to write the lyrics by the notion that it's possible to identify a person's religion by the street on which they lived, particularly in Belfast and also their income depending upon the part of the street. The song's signature is Edge´s repeating guitar arpeggio using a delay effect that is played at the beginning and end of the song; Adam´s bass lines are also to be mentioned.

In Rolling Stone (issue 1054), the song was ranked 28th in the list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time."

In a 1987 interview,Bono said of the song:

"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. I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don’t hold you down. An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they’re making - literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. You can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side of that street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name.

This is one of the most powerful performances at Slane Castle.

The original video was directed by Meiert Avis. The song was performed to playback on the rooftop of the Republic Liquor Store at East 7th Street and South Main Street in Los Angeles on 27 March 1987. The scenes including the police shutting the video down due to traffic concerns are real, although the video was edited and heavily overdubbed to make it appear the band defied the police and kept on filming the video. In reality they stopped performing upon being ordered to do so. In 1988, the music video won a Grammy for "Best Performance Music Video".