Songfacts®:

• This blazing, electro-grunge rocker was formerly titled "Sexy Boots." In an interview with VH1, Bono said the phrase "Get on Your Boots" is an East African slang term for using a condom. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alec Thorp - Yorktown Heights, NY
• The Edge recalled to Rolling Stone that this song, "started just with me playing and Larry drumming. And we took it from there."
• The song's music video was directed by Alex Courtes who previously helmed the promos for "City Of Blinding Lights" and "Vertigo." Courtes' clip for the latter won a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video.
• U2 opened the 2009 Grammy awards with this song.
• The Edge told The Sun February 27, 2009 that producer Brian Eno hated this song, "at first but eventually got into it."
• Despite being the lead single from No Line on the Horizon, this only reached #12 in the UK singles chart. Previously every first single from a new U2 album apart from "Stay (Faraway So Close)" had made #1 since 1988. It was also the band's first release to miss the UK Top 10 since December 1997 when "If God Will Send His Angels" only managed to each #12, due to the competition of the other singles issued during the Christmas period. Bono suggested to Q magazine January 2010 that its relative failure may have been because it "was too spongy for the audience."
• Co-producer Daniel Lanois told The National Post about this song's composition: "Edge came up with that at home. That riff. He had a pretty solid demo of that. Some things were born - that 'Let me in the sound' - that section came quite late. It was a little chant thing we all loved. Bono was batting lyrics around on that. It always had that great energy. Everyone worked real hard on that. I did my bit with that simple - it may seem simple - that little dub 'love' - was compliments Danny Lanois."
• The "let me in the sound" chant reoccurs as a theme a few times on No Line on the Horizon. Lanois explained: "It was something Bono was toying with - that we are children of the sound. Having been at it for as long as he has, he realizes how special the gift is to be moved by music and that we live in the sound. That's what we resonate with and what we are as artisans and artist. A gratefulness and a realization."
• By the end of 2009, Bono had stopped singing the words "sexy boots" live. He explained to Q magazine January 2010: "I think we have to accept that people misunderstood what is a term of affection in our house as a bunch of grown-ups getting all sexy. (laughs)."