Rattle and Hum album lyrics by U2
Following the mega-selling The Joshua Tree was always going to be a tough act. U2 had become the biggest rock band in the world, or near enough, and the next move was always going to be judged against the mythic weight of that album.
Rattle and Hum was U2’s answer. Released in 1988, it was part studio album, part live album, part road movie soundtrack, part love letter to American music. It gave the world huge songs like Desire, Angel of Harlem, When Love Comes To Town, and All I Want Is You.
As a full album experience, though, it has always divided fans and critics. At its best, Rattle and Hum captures U2 stretching toward blues, gospel, soul, folk, country, and rock and roll history. At its clumsiest, it can feel like four Irish men trying to climb inside the American songbook while the cameras are still rolling.
Rattle and Hum
Released: 10 October 1988
Producer: Jimmy Iovine
Engineer: David Tickle
Label: Island Records
Album concept: A mixture of new studio tracks, live performances, covers, and American roots music tributes gathered around U2’s Joshua Tree era.
The album title comes from a lyric in U2’s own Bullet the Blue Sky, one of the darker and more politically charged songs from The Joshua Tree. That matters, because Rattle and Hum is not just a victory lap. It is U2 trying to understand the country that had just helped turn them into a global force.
Rattle and Hum album lyrics and song list
The track list below includes the original album songs, live performances, covers, and related lyric pages.
- Helter Skelter Beatles cover
- Van Diemen's Land
- Desire
- Hawkmoon 269
- All Along The Watchtower Bob Dylan cover
- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
- Freedom For My People Sterling Magee and Adam Gussow
- Silver And Gold
- Pride (In The Name Of Love)
- Angel Of Harlem
- Love Rescue Me
- When Love Comes To Town
- Heartland
- God Part II
- The Star Spangled Banner
- Bullet The Blue Sky
- All I Want Is You
The idea behind Rattle and Hum
U2 wanted Rattle and Hum to feel like a pilgrimage through American music. The record nods to blues, gospel, rock and roll, folk protest songs, soul, and the mythology of the road. That is why the album moves from The Beatles to Bob Dylan, from Harlem gospel voices to B.B. King, from Memphis atmosphere to arena-sized live versions of songs from The Joshua Tree.
The concept was ambitious. Maybe too ambitious. U2 were not just releasing another set of songs. They were making a film, documenting a tour, writing new material, covering their heroes, and trying to place themselves inside a lineage that included Elvis Presley, Billie Holiday, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and the blues tradition. That is both the charm and the danger of the record.
On Desire, The Edge leans into a sharp Bo Diddley-style rhythm. On When Love Comes To Town, B.B. King brings real blues authority into the room. Angel of Harlem turns Billie Holiday into a bright soul tribute. God Part II answers John Lennon with a tougher, more cynical late-1980s edge.
Production lore and studio trivia
Jimmy Iovine produced the album, which makes sense. He had already worked with artists who understood how to balance grit, scale, and radio drama. For U2, he helped shape an album that had to carry several identities at once: live document, film soundtrack, roots-rock experiment, and follow-up to one of the defining albums of the decade.
Part of the album’s lore comes from its connection to Sun Studio in Memphis, the legendary room associated with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and early rock and roll history. U2’s presence there says a lot about what Rattle and Hum was trying to do. The band were not just borrowing sounds. They were chasing ghosts.
The album also folds in live recordings from the Joshua Tree Tour. That gives it a restless shape. One moment it is a studio record. The next it is a concert document. Then it becomes a covers album. Then it becomes a travelogue. That unevenness is part of why some listeners love it and others find it overstuffed.
Rattle and Hum B-sides and related songs
The Rattle and Hum era also produced several B-sides and covers that deepen the album’s roots-music mood. Some are affectionate tributes, some are loose studio extras, and some feel like U2 testing how far they could stretch the American songbook before making their next major turn.
- Unchained Melody, a cover of the Righteous Brothers, released around the All I Want Is You single
- Dancing Barefoot, a cover of Patti Smith, associated with the When Love Comes To Town single
- Everlasting Love, a cover of the Robert Knight song, also connected to the When Love Comes To Town single
- Hallelujah Here She Comes, released as a B-side to Desire
- A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel, released as a B-side to Angel of Harlem
Themes of the lyrics in Rattle and Hum
Rattle and Hum explores U2’s complicated romance with America. The album loves American music, but it also questions American power. It celebrates gospel, blues, soul, and rock and roll, while still making room for songs about violence, exile, spiritual hunger, and political pressure.
Bullet The Blue Sky remains the album’s most confrontational political moment. It carries forward U2’s anger about American involvement in Central America and turns the live stage into something close to a sermon. Silver And Gold also belongs in that moral universe, with Bono reaching toward injustice, captivity, and the cost of silence.
Other songs are more spiritual and romantic. Hawkmoon 269 turns need into a vast, almost desert-like prayer. Heartland imagines America as landscape and dream. All I Want Is You closes the album with one of U2’s finest love songs, a track that strips away the big cultural gestures and comes back to longing, commitment, and emotional vulnerability.
That is why Rattle and Hum still matters. It catches U2 at a strange point: sincere, huge, hungry, occasionally overreaching, but still capable of writing songs with real force.
The album’s success
Commercially, Rattle and Hum was massive. The album reached No. 1 in the UK and US, and it kept U2 at the centre of global rock culture after The Joshua Tree. Desire became U2’s first UK No. 1 single and won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
The album also gave U2 several songs that continued to live outside the original film project. All I Want Is You became one of the band’s great closing statements. Angel of Harlem remains one of their warmest tributes. When Love Comes To Town gave the band a genuine collaboration with B.B. King rather than just another name-check.
The perceived failure of Rattle and Hum
The criticism around Rattle and Hum was mostly about tone. Some critics felt U2 looked too eager to crown themselves heirs to American rock history. The film made that problem louder, because the band’s sincerity was placed inside a very grand black-and-white frame.
The album itself has a similar issue. It contains excellent songs, but it does not always move like a unified record. Covers, live tracks, studio songs, spoken moments, gospel tributes, blues collaborations, and political set-pieces all compete for space. That messy sprawl is part of its personality, but it also keeps the album from feeling as clean and devastating as The Joshua Tree.
Still, history has been kinder to Rattle and Hum than the sharpest reviews were at the time. Its best songs have lasted. Its ambition is easy to understand. Its flaws helped force U2 into the reinvention that followed.
And you can dream out loud
After the long climb of the 1980s, U2 reached the end of the decade sounding powerful but cornered by their own seriousness. Around the final shows of 1989, Bono told the audience that it was the end of something for U2 and that the band had to go away and dream it all up again.
That line became one of the great turning points in U2 lore. They had followed The Joshua Tree with a record that tried to embrace America, rock history, gospel, blues, and political theatre all at once. The only sane next step was to break the machine apart.
And they did. U2 went away, changed the lighting, changed the irony level, changed the sound, and came back with Achtung Baby in 1991. In that sense, Rattle and Hum is more than a slightly uneven follow-up to The Joshua Tree. It is the pressure point before the explosion.
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