Songfacts®:

• In 2016 Bono experienced a serious but unspecified health scare. On this bluesy gospel-tinged track, he croons the lyric "Oh Jesus, if I'm still your friend". The London Sunday Times asked the U2 frontman if his brush with death led him from God. He replied:
  
  "My curiosity takes me to dangerous places, and I've been nonchalant about that. Partly because of my faith, but then I felt that faith go out of reach. It was last Christmas, and I was surprised. Belief is preposterous, but I have it, and I thought, 'I'm experiencing fear!'
  
  It was new, and I realised I don't want to die. I want to spend more time with my kids. There are songs I want to write, stuff I can be useful for. Then, when I admitted I was afraid, my faith returned."
• Bono references his brush with mortality when he opens the song with:
  
  I shouldn't be here 'cause I should be dead
  I can see the lights in front of me
  
  "Edge wasn't fibbing when he said that we had to stop and take account of what was going on in the world," Bono told Q magazine. "He just didn't want to mention what was going on in my world. I don't want to get too into the details of it, for fear of the melodramatic reality TV kerfuffle. A lot of people have these moments. I've had a few. Not quite at this level."
• The track's main riff is based on a bass breakdown from Haim's 2014 single "My Song 5."
  
  "I said to Edge, 'Well, sample stuff if you want. Why not?'" Bono recalled to Q Magazine. "Sampling stuff is great freedom. Freedom to have fun. To make it a playground again where you have access to a wider pallet of colours."
• The three Haim girls popped into the studio in July 2016 to lend their voices to the song's gospel chorus.
• Shouldn't be here 'cause I should be dead
  I can see the lights in front of me
  
  In his 2022 autobiography Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, Bono revealed that he had eight hours of heart surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to repair an aortic valve that had been damaged by a congenital defect. He underwent the surgery on December 20, 2016, just days before the announcement of U2's 2017 Joshua Tree tour.