Where the Streets Have No Name
by U2
- 123
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 50
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
The Edge wrote the music for "Where the Streets Have No Name" the night before the band resumed work on The Joshua Tree. In an upstairs room at Melbeach House, his newly bought home, he used a four-track machine to record keyboards, bass, guitar and a drum machine. The sessions were nearing the end and the band lacked a great live song. He imagined what he would want to hear at a U2 show as a fan. When he finished the rough mix, he thought it was the best guitar part and song of his life. Nobody else was home. He danced around and punched the air.
Bono wrote the lyrics on an airsickness bag in an Ethiopian village while on a humanitarian visit with his wife, Ali Hewson. They were inspired by a story about Belfast, where a person's religion and income could be read from the street where they lived.
Recording was hard. Brian Eno estimated that half the album sessions went on this one song. The band replaced each instrument take until nothing of the original remained, and Eno considered erasing the tapes to start fresh. He had them cued up when engineer Pat McCarthy walked in, dropped a tray of tea and held him back. The song came out in August 1987 and reached number 13 on the US Hot 100 and number four in the UK.
Where the Streets Have No Name runs at 123 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.95 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 488 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.