Running to Stand Still

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"Running to Stand Still"

Song by U2
from the album The Joshua Tree
Released	9 March 1987
Genre	Rock
Length	4:18
Label	Island Records
Producer(s)	Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois
The Joshua Tree track listing
"Bullet the Blue Sky (4)	"Running to Stand Still" (5)	"Red Hill Mining Town (6)

"Running to Stand Still" is the fifth track from U2's 1987 album, The Joshua Tree. It is a mostly soft, slow, keyboards-based song about a heroin-addicted woman from the Ballymun Seven Towers area of Dublin^[1], shown in the lyric "I see seven towers/But I only see one way out." The woman's addiction is reflected in lines such as "She runs through the streets/With her eyes painted red" and "She will suffer the needle chill." Bono's lyrics evoke helplessness and frustration: "You've got to cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice."

The song was regularly played through to the Zoo TV Tour. It returned to U2 concerts in the 2005 Vertigo Tour. Like the album, it is nearly always preceded by "Bullet the Blue Sky" and features The Edge on keyboards, the exception being on Zoo TV where he would play guitar. During Zoo TV, Bono would act like a herion addict while singing the song. During most of its performance on the Vertigo Tour, it was followed by a reading of some of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; after July 2005, it was replaced in that role by "Miss Sarajevo". Concert performances of "Running to Stand Still" are found in the Rattle and Hum film and the Zoo TV: Live from Sydney and Vertigo: Live from Chicago video releases.