Walk On

This song is about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese activist who was sentenced to house arrest in 1989 for protesting her government. Earlier that year, while walking with some of her supporters, soldiers blocked their path and pointed rifles at them. Suu Kyi kept walking, despite orders to stop. The soldiers threatened to shoot her, but didn't. Her actions have been closely monitored by the government, but she remains an influential leader and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Her house arrest ended in 2010 and she was released. "It's a song about nobility and personal sacrifice," Bono explains in the book U2 by U2, "about doing what's right, even if your heart is telling you otherwise... Love, in the highest sense of the word, is the only think that you can always take with you, in your heart. At some point you are going to have to lose everything else anyway."

The album All That You Can't Leave Behind was banned in Myanmar (Burma became Myanmar in 1989) because of this song. U2 had a page on their website about the situation in Burma, where citizens were often killed or forced into labor.

U2 and Kyi were both awarded the Honorary Freedom of Dublin award in 2000. The band met Kyi's son, who accepted the award, and became interested in her work.