“I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For” by U2

"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" is the second track on The Joshua Tree, U2's 1987 album, and it followed "With or Without You" as the record's second single that May. It began life as a band demo on which Larry Mullen, Jr. played an unusual rhythm pattern, and like much of the album it grew out of the group's fascination with American music, gospel in particular.

That's what it sounds like: a hymn wandering down a desert highway. Bono sings high and aching about a spiritual search that never quite ends, and blows harmonica too, while The Edge plays a chiming arpeggio and joins producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois on the choir-like backing vocals. Adam Clayton plays bass, Mullen handles drums and percussion, Eno adds keyboards, and Lanois chips in tambourine, omnichord and extra guitar. Flood recorded it, and Eno, Lanois and Mark Wallis mixed it. Bono wrote the words; the music is credited to all four.

It became the band's second straight number one on the Hot 100 and reached 6 in Britain, and it drew Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It has been a fixture of their tours ever since, and in 2010 Rolling Stone put it at 93 among the 500 greatest songs of all time.

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