The Unforgettable Fire

U2 wrote it, with lyrics by Bono, and Eno and Lanois produced; our upload is titled only The Unforgettable Fire, so it may be the song or the album. The single came out on April 22, 1985 at 4:56, the second from the album. It grew from a short piano piece by the Edge written during a demo session with Jimmy Destri of Blondie, and Bono and the Edge developed it in late 1983 at Bono's Martello tower home in Bray. Noel Kelehan of the RTE Concert Orchestra arranged the strings, and the Edge's guitar part came from de-tuned strings and harmonics. The subject is the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors' art exhibition at the Peace Museum in Chicago, which also gave the album its title.

It was U2's first Irish number one, reached 6 in the UK, their third top ten there, and 3 in New Zealand. U2 first played it on September 2, 1984 in Auckland, and it appears at most Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree shows, on the 1989 Lovetown Tour, on the opening night of U2 360 in 2009, and once on the Experience + Innocence Tour. Setlist.fm lists 259 performances, ranked 34th. The 1985 UK 7-inch carried a live "A Sort of Homecoming" from Wembley Arena. We found no confirmed covers or samples.