Songoftheday 9/3/15 - I want to run I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside...

"Where The Streets Have No Name" - U2
from the album The Joshua Tree (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #13 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9

Today's SOTD comes from the Irish alternative band U2, whose American pop breakthrough album The Joshua Tree had already spun off a pair of #1 hits with "With Or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". The third single from the record was its opening song, "Where The Streets Have No Name", built around the Edge's unique guitar strumming as a foundation for Bono's ruminations on the places where sustenance overpowers identity. The music video, recorded on top of an L.A. roof amidst confrontations by the police. The clip ended up winning a Grammy for Best Video...

"Where The Streets Have No Name" became the third American pop hit from The Joshua Tree, reaching the top-20 in November of 1987. The song also went to #11 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart (very surprising that it didn't make the top-10). Internationally, the single topped the chart in New Zealand and their native Ireland, climbed to #4 in the UK (tying the rank of WOWY), top-10 in the Netherlands, and #11 in Canada.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

The song has since become the one song you're certain to hear at every U2 concert. Here they are on the Joshua Tree tour for the film Rattle and Hum in 1987...

In 1991 the Pet Shop Boys "mashed up" the song with the 60s classic "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" from the Four Seasons, and went to #72 in the US and all the way to #4 in Britain (and top-10 across much of Europe)....