Composition
The song was written about and dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi. It was written in the form of a supporting, uplifting anthem, praising her for her activism and fighting for freedom in Burma. She was subsequently under house arrest from 1989 to 2010 because of her actions. Because of the lyrical content in the song, anyone who attempted to import the album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, to Burma could face a prison sentence lasting between three and twenty years.
The title of All That You Can't Leave Behind was derived from the lyrics of this song: The only baggage you can bring is all that you can't leave behind. "Walk On" originally consisted of two different songs which, according to Adam Clayton, had great riffs but sounded terrible separately. The group combined them, and ended up with one of their most critically praised songs.
Read more about this topic: Walk On (U2 Song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing ... I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)