With or Without You
by U2
- 112
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 54
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
The Edge supplied the part that saved "With or Without You". Late in 1985, Bono wrote the chord sequence for a rough demo, and the group kept working at it without progress. The Edge thought it was awful. By the time of The Joshua Tree sessions at Danesmoate House in Dublin, the band was close to abandoning it. Bono's friend Gavin Friday, who believed it could be a hit, helped rearrange it, and Brian Eno added a keyboard arpeggio.
Then the Edge was sent a prototype of the Infinite Guitar by Canadian musician Michael Brook. It allowed notes to be sustained, much like an E-Bow but with every point between no sustain and endless sustain. The assembly instructions were elaborate, and one wrongly placed wire could give a nasty electric shock. From the control room, Bono and Friday heard the sustained sound the Edge was making in the next room, and Daniel Lanois said it was better than he thought. The Edge recorded his part in two takes.
Bono wrote the lyrics on his first night on the Côte d'Azur in 1986, torn between his life as a married man and as a musician. The song came out as the lead single on March 16, 1987 and gave U2 their first number one in the US and Canada, holding the top of the Hot 100 for three weeks.
With or Without You runs at 112 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.14 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 536 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.