“The Fly” by U2

"The Fly" was the first thing anyone heard from Achtung Baby, released by Island on 21 October 1991, and it announced a very different U2. Gone was the wide-open sound of the '80s; in came grinding, dance-friendly hip-hop beats, industrial clatter, a distorted vocal and a squalling, elaborate guitar solo. Bono put it plainly: this was "the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree".

The song imagines a phone call from somebody in Hell who's having a fine time and wants to pass on what he's learned there, and the lyrics string together aphorisms Bono gathered during the sessions. Daniel Lanois produced it, Flood engineered, and the mix belongs to Flood, Lanois and Steve Lillywhite.

It also introduced The Fly, the character Bono played on the Zoo TV Tour: a leather-clad cartoon of a rock star in huge wrap-around shades, strutting like he owned the place. The single gave U2 their second number one in the UK and went over big on alternative rock radio, and Jon Klein and Ritchie Smyth shot the video in Dublin and London.

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