Where The Streets Have No Name - Composition

Composition

"Where the Streets Have No Name" is played at a tempo of 126 beats per minute. The introduction and outro are played in a 3/4 time signature, while the remainder of the song is in a common 4/4 signature. The songs opens with an instrumental section, starting with chorale-like sustained synthesiser notes. The guitar fades in after 42 seconds; this part consists of a repeated "chiming" six-note arpeggio. A "dotted eighth" delay effect is used to "play" each note in the arpeggio twice, thus creating a rich sound. The bass and drums enter at 1:10.

The introduction, following a I–IV–I–IV–vi–V–I chord progression, creates a "wall of sound", as described by Mark Butler, against which the vocals emerge after nearly two minutes. The guitar part played for the remainder of the song features The Edge strumming percussive sixteenth notes. The bass and drums continue in regular eighth and sixteenth notes, respectively, while Bono's vocal performance, in contrast, varies greatly in its timbre, ("he sighs; he moans; he grunts; he exhales audibly; he allows his voice to crack") as well as timing by his usage of rubato to slightly offset the notes he sings from the beat.

This development reaches a climax during the first chorus at the line "burning down love" (A–G–F♯–D); the melody progresses through a series of scale degrees that lead to the highest note in the song, the D♭₅ at "burning". In later choruses, Bono sings "blown by the wind" with the same melody, stretching the same note even longer. After the third chorus, the song's outro is played, the instrumentation reverting to the same state as it was in the introduction, with a six-note guitar arpeggio played against sustained synthesiser notes.

"' the Streets Have No Name' was the perfect introduction. It is one of the most extraordinary ideas, only matched by The Doors' 'Break on Through (To the Other Side)' as a throw-down to an audience. Do you want to go there? Because if you do, I'm ready to go there with you, to that other place. Call it what you like, a place of imagination, where there are no limitations."

The lyrics were inspired by a story that Bono heard about the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland, where a person's religion and income are evident by the street they live on. He contrasted this with the anonymity he felt when visiting Ethiopia and said, "the guy in the song recognizes this contrast and thinks about a world where there aren't such divisions, a place where the streets have no name. To me, that's the way a great rock 'n' roll concert should be: a place where everyone comes together... Maybe that's the dream of all art: to break down the barriers and the divisions between people and touch upon the things that matter the most to us all." According to him, the song is ostensibly about "Transcendence, elevation, whatever you want to call it." Bono, who compared many of his lyrics prior to The Joshua Tree to "sketches", said that "'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."

The open-ended nature of the lyrics has led to many interpretations. Journalist Michael Campbell believed the lyrics send "a message of hope" and wish for a "world that is not divided by class, wealth, race, or any other arbitrary criterion". With regard to the place Bono was referring to in the song, he said, "I'm not sure, really, about that. I used to think it was Belfast..." Journalist Niall Stokes believes the title was influenced by Bono's and his wife Ali's visit to Ethiopia as volunteer aid-workers. Bono has expressed mixed opinions about the open-ended lyrics: "I can look at it now and recognize that has one of the most banal couplets in the history of pop music. But it also contains some of the biggest ideas. In a curious way, that seems to work. If you get any way heavy about these things, you don't communicate. But if you're flip or throwaway about it, then you do. That's one of the paradoxes I've come to terms with."