“Bad” by U2

"Bad" is the seventh track on The Unforgettable Fire, U2's 1984 album, and it's the record's slow-building centerpiece. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, producing and engineering, give it room to swell, the music shimmering in circles while Bono climbs from a murmur to a plea.

The song is about heroin addiction, though Bono has told different stories over the years about who inspired it. He wrote the words, all four members share the music credit, and Kevin Killen chipped in on engineering.

Onstage it became a monster. At Live Aid in 1985 the band stretched it out to 12 minutes, and that performance turned out to be a breakthrough moment for them; a live take on that year's Wide Awake in America EP caught on with album-rock radio and reached 19 on Billboard's Top Rock Tracks chart. It remains a fan favourite and one of the songs U2 play most often in concert, and film makers have borrowed the studio version too, for Taking Lives in 2004 and the trailer for Brothers in 2009.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.