“I Will Follow” by U2

"I Will Follow" throws open the door on Boy, U2's debut album, and it went out as the record's second single in October 1980: a young Irish band sprinting out of the blocks, all ringing guitar, shoving bass and drums hit like there's no tomorrow.

Behind the rush there's grief. Bono wrote the words for his mother, Iris Hewson, whom he lost at 14, and he sings them like a kid who hasn't stopped running since. The Edge's guitar chimes and slashes, Adam Clayton's bass pushes hard, and Larry Mullen, Jr. hammers away underneath, with Steve Lillywhite producing and Paul Thomas engineering, catching the band's raw nerve without sanding it down.

It was also U2's first music video, shot in Dublin with Meiert Avis directing, and the single kept coming back: it was issued five times in all, the last in 2011 with a live version taped at that year's Glastonbury Festival. Most telling of all, it is the only song U2 have played on every tour since their first album came out, which says plenty about how much of the band is still in it.

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