Exit

Like Bullet The Blue Sky, Exit is an angry and discordant song, a murder ballad of sorts. The song was written by Bono after he read Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, an account of the life of convicted killer Gary Gilmore (brother of Rolling Stone writer Mikal Gilmore), who was executed in 1977. It is also thought that In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, also inspired some of the lyrics. With the working title for the track being the Executioner's Song, Bono wanted to write "a story in the mind of a killer"and described the lyrics as "a short story really, except I left out a few verses because I liked it as a sketch". It's "about a guy who gets an idea into his head. He picks it up off a preacher on the radio or something and goes out...".

The point of the song is "to convey the state of mind of someone driven, by whatever powerful urges, to the very brink of desperation. The line "So hands that build, Can also pull down" was seen by many as a jab at the US government's conflicting roles in international relations (the songs Bullet the Blue Sky and Mothers of the Disappeared are two songs more focused on the foreign policy of the US government). Bono, when talking about the song said, "It is all very well to address America and the violence that is an aggressive foreign policy but to really understand that you have to get under the skin of your own darkness, the violence we all contain within us. Violence is something I have quite a bit about. I have a side of me which, in a corner, can be very violent. It's the least attractive thing in anyone and I wanted to own up to that."