Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of

This song is about Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of INXS who was found dead in a hotel room in 1997 when he was 37 years old. He and Bono were close friends, so close that Hutchence asked Bono and his wife Ali to be godparents to his daughter Tiger Lily, born in 1996. In his memoir Surrender, Bono says they turned him down because they saw him entering a downward spiral of drug use and didn't want to enable him. The song is both a tribute to Hutchence and message of understanding, letting anyone going through a rough time know that it will pass.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Bono said that he and Hutchence discussed suicide in the past: "We discussed suicide a few times and we both agreed how pathetic it was." Bono said they had "kinda promised each other" neither would ever kill themselves.

Bono (from Rolling Stone): "It's a row between mates. You're kinda trying to wake them up out of an idea. In my case it's a row I didn't have while he was alive. I feel the biggest respect I could pay to him was not to write some stupid soppy f--king song, so I wrote a really tough, nasty little number, slapping him around the head. And I'm sorry, but that's how it came out of me."