Songfacts®:

• On this track, Bono sings about escaping into a story, which can take the form of a TV show, photograph, or song. Like the song "Twilight," some fans interpreted it to be about homosexuality, but Bono says it isn't.
• One of the first U2 songs, "Stories For Boys" was a live favorite in their early years. It was revived in 2005 for their Vertigo tour.
• This was included on U2's first release, U23, a single available only in Ireland in 1979 which also contains "Out Of Control" and "Boy Girl." Now a collector's item, only 1000 copies were made.
• Along with "Out Of Control," this was one of two songs to make it on U2's debut album, Boy, from the U23 single.
• The theme of innocence permeates the Boy album. "Some part of us wanted to be men of the world, but a greater part knew we were so much more powerful as boys who didn't know too much about 'The World,'" Bono wrote in his book Surrender. "I wanted to write about the human spirit because I was trying to better understand my own."
• Songs of Surrender is an album of re-recorded songs by U2. Released on March 17, 2023, it features 40 songs from the band's back catalog, many in stripped-down and acoustic arrangements. The album was produced by guitarist The Edge and was recorded during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
  
  This song was one of several that was reinterpreted for the album and took on new light. "With 'Stories For Boys,' we took the scissors and completely rewrote that lyric from the perspective of now," The Edge told Mojo magazine, "because 'Stories For Boys' was written by a bunch of boys. We were 17 or 18. So now, we're looking at those young guys, from this distance of time and experience, to give another light to what the song was about."