Running to Stand Still (4:17)

“Running to Stand Still” is the fifth track from U2’s 1987 album, The Joshua Tree. It is a soft, slow, piano-based song about a heroin-addicted woman from the Ballymun Seven Towers area of Dublin, 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.”

Throughout its live history, “Running to Stand Still” has nearly always followed “Bullet the Blue Sky”, matching the order they appear on the album, as well. It was first played live on the Joshua Tree Tour, with The Edge playing keyboards and Bono playing guitar, usually acoustic. It was played this way until the Zoo TV Tour, when it was significantly altered. In these shows, The Edge played guitar on his Fender Stratocaster while Bono sang the song on the B-stage with a headset microphone, acting like a heroin addict. It was not played on the PopMart Tour or Elevation Tour, but it returned to U2 concerts in the 2005 Vertigo Tour, with the original combination of Edge on keyboards and Bono on guitar. 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.