U2 With Or Without You Elevation Tour Boston

"With or Without You" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the third track on their fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree (1987), and was released as the album's lead single on 16 March 1987. The song was the group's most successful single at the time, becoming their first number-one hit in both the United States and Canada by topping the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks and the RPM national singles chart for one week, with a further three weeks at number two.
In this song, Bono describes a tortured relationship that he can't escape. The lyric can be interpreted many ways; Bono explained that he wanted to write a love song that dealt with real issues.
In 1987 Bono explained that everybody in the group knows what the line "And you give yourself away" means: "It's about how I feel in U2 at times - exposed. I'm not going to do many interviews this year. Because there's a cost to my personal life, and a cost to the group as well."
In 2005 Bono called the refrain most important part of the song because it signifies a release of mental tension, "which is when the 'Aah-aah' comes out. That is what giving yourself away is, musically."
This was U2's breakout hit in America, where they had only modest success until The Joshua Tree album. They had long been stars in their native Ireland, and with their previous album, The Unforgettable Fire, they broke through in the UK, but until "With Or Without You" their biggest US hit was "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" at #33. When they did conquer America, they did so swiftly and thoroughly; "With Or Without You" went to #1, and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" followed to the top spot.
The Edge used a distortion device called an "Infinite Guitar" to create the wail. It was invented by Michael Brook, whom The Edge worked with on the soundtrack for a 1986 film called The Captive. Brook created the Infinite Guitar by replacing the pickup on a guitar with a magnetic device that vibrates the strings. Co-producer Daniel Lanois told Mojo magazine January 2008 about the recording of this song: "'For 'With Or Without You' we had the rhythm and the chords then we were testing Michael Brook's Infinite Guitar Invention. I asked Edge just to play a little something with it. He did two takes and those are the ones in the ultimate mix of 'With Or Without You.' Beautiful sounds, stratospheric."
The title is a more sincere variation of the "can't live with them, can't live without them" idiom, which is typically used to describe something or someone that is frustrating, but hard to give up.

Boston