With or Without You

Name	With or Without You
Cover	Withorwithoutyoucover.jpg
Artist	U2
Album	The Joshua Tree
Released	21 March 1987
Format	7" vinyl, 12" vinyl, cassette, CD
Recorded	Danesmoate House in Dublin, Ireland, 1986
Genre	Rock
Length	4:53
Label	Island
Producer	Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois
Last single	"The Unforgettable Fire"(1985)
This single	"With or Without You" (1987)
Next single	"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"(1987)
Album	The Joshua Tree
Type	studio
Prev track	"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
Prev no	2
This track	"With or Without You"
Track no	3
Next track	"Bullet the Blue Sky"
Next no	4

}} }}

"With or Without You" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the third track from their 1987 album, The Joshua Tree, and was released as the album's first single on 21 March 1987. The song was the group's most successful single at the time, becoming their first number-one hit in the 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 or Without You" features sustained guitar parts played by guitarist The Edge with a prototype of the Infinite Guitar, along with vocals by lead singer Bono and a bassline by bassist Adam Clayton. The song originated from a demo recorded in late 1985 that the group continued to work on throughout The Joshua Tree sessions. Ostensibly a troubled love song, the track's lyrics were inspired by Bono's conflicting feelings about the lives he led as a musician and domestic man.

Critics praised the song upon its release. It is frequently performed on the band's tours, and it has appeared on a number of their compilation albums and concert films. "With or Without You" is U2's second most frequently covered song. In 2010, Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at number 132 on their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

Writing and recording

In late 1985, U2 convened at a house that drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. bought to review material the group had written during The Unforgettable Fire Tour. During this time, a rough demo of "With or Without You" was written, with lead vocalist Bono composing the song's chord sequence. The band continued to work on the song at STS Studios, creating many permutations of the track, but not making any progress. Guitarist The Edge considered the song at that point to be "awful". According to Clayton, these early versions of the song sounded too sentimental and "very traditional because the chords just went round and round and round". The instrument allowed sustained notes to be played, producing "a similar effect to the E-Bow", but with the ability to provide all the "mid-points between no sustain and infinite sustain" that the E-Bow cannot provide. Although certain stanzas of lyrics are repeated, the song does not follow a traditional verse-chorus form. Lanois says of it, "It has tension and builds like one of those great Roy Orbison songs, where every section is unique and never repeats. I like that kind of sophistication [...]." A high sustained guitar part (played by The Edge's Infinite Guitar) enters, played "dry" in the left channel before reverberating on the right. | width = 27% | align = right | style = padding:10px; }} Bono's vocals enter at 0:28, and they are in a lower register than most of his past vocals. At 0:58, an additional sustained guitar part joins the mix. Toby Creswell echoed these sentiments, saying it "can be read as a song about either marital romance or spiritual need".

According to Bono, the song was heavily influenced by Scott Walker's album Climate of Hunter. The song was selected as the lead single from The Joshua Tree. United States radio stations were allowed to play the song at 11:30 a.m. on 4 March 1987, with strong warnings by Island Records against playing it earlier. The single was released on 21 March 1987, two and half weeks after the album was released. and 18 weeks in total on the Hot 100. The song also topped Billboards Album Rock Tracks chart, Canada's RPM Top 100, In 2009, the song re-entered the UK Singles Chart at number 43 on the week ending 31 May, based on download sales due to Shaun Smith's performance of the song in the semi-final of Britain's Got Talent.

Two videos were shot in Dublin in February 1987 and was co-directed by Meiert Avis and Matt Mahurin. The first includes abstracts shots of dancer Morleigh Steinberg edited in between shots of the band playing the song. A second alternative version can be found in the Super Deluxe version of the album.

Live performances

.]]

"With or Without You" was first played live at the second show on the Joshua Tree Tour on 4 April 1987, and was a regular for the rest of that tour. It was played at most shows on 1989's Lovetown Tour. During these tours, two extensions to the song not present on the studio version were played: an extra verse with lyrics that typically read "We'll shine like stars in the summer night/We'll shine like stars in the winter light/One heart, one hope, one love" or modifications thereof, which appears on the Rattle and Hum movie; and a snippet of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (along with the "shine like stars" lyrics) which can be heard in the live album and concert film Live from Paris. Since the PopMart Tour, it has been more common for Bono to repeat the "Ohh" at the climax of the song, with the "shine like stars" verse sung rarely.

"With or Without You" was played at most Zoo TV Tour concerts and every concert on the PopMart Tour. It was dropped from the setlist during the third leg of the Elevation Tour. It was initially a rare inclusion during the Vertigo Tour - over the two months of the tour's first leg, it was only played four times. It became a regular concert inclusion during stadium concerts on the second leg in Europe and remained in the setlist for the third leg. It has been played on every night of the U2 360° Tour, occasionally with the "shine like stars" coda.

Live performances of the song also appear in the group's concert films , , , , , U2 3D, and U2 360° at the Rose Bowl.

Reception

"With or Without You" received critical praise upon the release of The Joshua Tree. Rolling Stone called it an "inventively arranged tune... that builds from a soothing beginning to a resounding climax". Bill Graham of Hot Press praised the song, suggesting it may be Bono's "most controlled vocal, building from an almost conversational first verse over a bare rhythm section to a soul-baring confession". Graham suggested the lyric "And you give yourself away" was essential to U2's message. The Sunday Independent suggested that the song was proof the band could be commercially accessible, yet not resort to rock clichés. NME called it "some kind of love song" and found musical and lyrical symmetry between the song and the group's 1981 album October. Mike DeGagne of Allmusic praised the song for Eno's and Lanois' "gleaming" production work, Bono's vocals and "poetic deftness", and for The Edge's "astute but assertive" guitar playing. DeGagne described Bono's singing as "unleashing all his vocal power, moving from a soft, subtle intro and middle to an explosive burst of unyielding energy toward the end". He made religious comparisons to the musical arrangement, saying the "discerning air sounds almost church-like as it slowly unravels". Readers of Rolling Stone voted "With or Without You" the "Best Single" in a 1987 end-of-year poll,

Legacy

"With or Without You" has become one of U2's most well-known songs, and it often appears in music critics' rankings of the best songs of all-time. In 2000, the song appeared at number eight on Rolling Stones list of "100 Greatest Pop Songs", compiled by Rolling Stone and MTV music critics to rank songs released since The Beatles' breakthrough. In 2005, Blender ranked the song at number 268 on its list of the "The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born". The following year, readers of Q voted "With or Without You" the 17th-greatest song in history. Music television network VH1 ranked the song number 13 on the "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s" countdown in its series The Greatest. In 2010, Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at number 132 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Creswell said the song struck a perfect balance between the "vigour and spit and attitude" of the group's teenage years and their new-found appreciation for the "power of understatement". | style="text-align:center;"|1 |- |- |- |- |- |- |}

See also

List of covers of U2 songs - With or Without You

References

;Footnotes

;Bibliography

External links

"With or Without You" lyrics and performances at U2.com

Category:English-language songs Category:1987 singles Category:Island Records singles Category:U2 songs Category:Songs written by Bono Category:Songs written by The Edge Category:Songs written by Adam Clayton Category:Songs written by Larry Mullen, Jr. Category:Songs produced by Brian Eno Category:Songs produced by Daniel Lanois Category:Songs produced by Steve Lillywhite Category:Rock ballads Category:Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles Category:Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks number-one singles Category:European Hot 100 Singles number-one singles Category:RPM Top Singles number-one singles Category:Music videos directed by Meiert Avis