Running to Stand Still

Running to Stand Still has been described by some as a song which slipped into the middle of The Joshua Tree "like a shadow from an unknown land", and in many respects it is precisely that. The song was written by U2 in the context of the heroin addiction epidemic in Dublin in the 1980s, but in the context of the album it was masked in amongst American folk music (Gallucci, 2017). Until the release of Songs of Innocence in 2014, U2 rarely wrote songs directly relating to their years growing up in Dublin, with the band instead choosing to give a higher priority to writing about The Troubles in Ireland more generally, or concerns on the international level. Running to Stand Still is relatively unique in the respect that is has a very specific connection to the landscape of the city of Dublin. The lyrics "I see seven towers, but only see one way out" is referring to the Ballymun flats, a series of seven local authority residential tower block in the Ballymun neighbourhood, which were built in the 1960s (though they have all now been demolished with the area now undergoing major redevelopment). Bono had grown up around these towers as they were being constructed, and witnessed the rapid fall of these buildings into disrepair, due to poor maintenance and lack of facilities. These factors and others, resulted in social conditions and communal ties to break down in the towers, with the smell of urine and vomit becoming commonplace, along with the abuse of drugs and alcohol. By the mid-1980s large parts of Dublin had become ravaged by cheap heroin, with the Ballymun flats being a notorious heroin black spot at the time the song was written (Stokes, 2005) .

For some, the this song is more than just being about drugs, with some believing the song is about addictions more generally, questioning whether we all are addicted to something, and if so what is it? Some suggest that the song is for "anyone who feels trapped in an impossible circumstance by overwhelming responsibility". Uncut magazine writer Andrew Mueller described the song as effectively depicting "the drug as another bogus escape, another fraudulent promise that there's ever any evading the truth" (O'Hare, 2007).