Songoftheday 2/24/18 - To touch is to heal to hurt is to steal, if you want to kiss the sky better learn how to kneel...

"Mysterious Ways" - U2
from the album Achtung Baby (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's song of the day comes from the Irish alternative rock group U2, who after become giant arena-size stars after their cornerstone album The Joshua Tree, took an organic left turn with the part concert documentary Rattle And Hum, which did manage to land them a top-3 pop hit in America with the roots-rock of "Desire", along with a top-20 follow-up with the retro soul of "Angel Of Harlem". That was followed by a collaboration with blues guitar royalty B.B. King with "When Love Comes To Town", which hit #2 on the rock radio chart but missed the top-40 at #68. Then "God Part II" (a proclaimed sequel to John Lennon's "God") hit #8 on that list, but missed the pop Hot 100 altogether. Finally, the love ballad "All I Want Is You" climbed to #13 on the Mainstream Rock chart and was a minor pop hit at #83. (Both "When Love Comes To Town" and "All I Want Is You" reached the top ten in the UK.) But even though that record was saturated with the influence of American music on their sound, the record relatively wasn't well-recieved in the States, and in result had an effect on Bono and the band's morale.

After a tour and a break they reconvened on the other side of the musical globe in Berlin where like David Bowie hoping to expand their sound into the more experimental and electronic side. However this caused so much turmoil they nearly fractured, before returning to Ireland and completing their seventh studio album Achtung Baby. A full three years after the release of Rattle And Hum, the promotional single "The Fly" was released ahead of the new record. Sounding nothing like the band of old, the combination of rave-style grinding guitars and ethereal cooing bridge sung by Bono as the titular character was a huge success internationally, reaching the top ten in most of Europe and topping the British, Irish, and Australian singles chart. However, in the U.S., where it did hit #1 for two weeks on the Modern Rock radio chart and #2 on the Mainstream Rock format, "The Fly" got swatted down to a #61 peak on the pop Hot 100 as mainstream radio didn't know what to do with the out-there track. But after the release of the album, which coincided with rock evolving to a more aggressive sound made clear by the success of grunge stars Nirvana concurrently, their commercial fortunes rose to meet their critical success with the set on the release of the second single "Mysterious Ways". Written with lyrics by Bono about the power of a woman over mankind laid on a funky dance beat from the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr and Adam Clayton, the song had the right alchemy of sound to find itself on pop radio in the States again. The music video, shot in Morocco, showed the juxtaposition of women's role in society, with a belly dancer (Morleigh Steinberg, who would later marry The Edge) interspersed with ladies in burkas...

"Mysterious Ways" returned U2 to the American pop top ten in January of 1992. The single spent an amazing twelve weeks at #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart (the longest stay since the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" way back in 1981), and nine weeks on their Modern Rock tally. The remixes on the 12"/CD single helped it slip on to their Dance Club Play list at #42. Internationally, the song topped the Canadian chart for two weeks, as well as a week in their Irish homeland. It also hit the top ten in Australia (#3), New Zealand (#3), Spain (#7), and the Netherlands (#8), while in the UK, it maxxed out at #13, and in France at #19 (it missed the top-40 in Germany at #46). "Mysterious Ways" won the Billboard Music Award for top Rock song in 1992, and the following year at the Grammys, the Achtung Baby album was nominated for Album of the Year (losing to Eric Clapton's Unplugged set) but did win for Rock Group Vocal Performance, while producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois won Producer of the Year Grammys.

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U2's tour behind the Achtung Baby album, the Zoo TV tour, was also groundbreaking - here's their performance of "Mysterious Ways"...