Red Hill Mining Town - Steve Lillywhite 2017 Mix

This is about the United Kingdom miners' strike of 1984. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had instituted a policy where mines that were considered unprofitable were shut down. Bono wanted to explore the impact the strike had on the miners' friends and families. "I was interested in the miners' strike politically, but I wanted to write about it on a more personal level," he told NME in 1987. "A cold statistic about a pit closure and redundancies that follow is drastic enough on one level, but it never tells the full human story. I wanted to follow the miner home and write about that situation in the song." He continued: "The untold story of the coal strike is the number of family relationships that either broke down or were put under great strain. That was the final blow. Men would lose their pride in themselves and wouldn't be able to face their children or sleep with their wives."

This was going to be the second single off The Joshua Tree, but they decided not to perform this on tour and could not promote it effectively.

This was dropped from the set list of the Joshua Tree tour when they discovered during rehearsals that Bono could not hit the high notes consistently. As a result, it was never performed live until U2's 30th anniversary tour opener in Vancouver on May 12, 2017. Bono explained in an interview with BBC Radio 2: "I used to write songs that I couldn't sing. And sometimes that was OK because the strains of the notes I couldn't reach was part of the drama, but occasionally they would really just wreck the next show," he said. "So I just left 'Red Hill Mining Town' off. But since then, I sing a bit better - or at least I've learned how to sing."