"Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own" is a song by rock band U2 and the third track from their 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The song was released as the album's second single in the United Kingdom on 7 February 2005 and it debuted at No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart. Originally titled "Tough," the song is about lead singer Bono's relationship with his dying father. The song won awards for "Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal" and "Song of the Year" at the 2006 Grammy Awards.

During the recording of U2's 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind, lead vocalist Bono was aware that his father, Bob Hewson, was beginning to die from cancer. Bono subsequently wrote a song about him called "Tough", as that was the impression he always had of his father; he called him: "A tough old boot of a guy. Irish, Dub, north side Dubliner, very cynical about the world and the people in it, but very charming and funny with it." After Bob died in 2001, Bono sang the song at his funeral. For the recording of the band's following album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, they revisited the song. While listening to it with Bono and guitarist the Edge, producer Steve Lillywhite critiqued the track, telling them that it did not have a chorus and that each verse simply was followed by the line "sometimes you can't make it on your own". Bono then asked for a guitar to play and spontaneously sang the lines "And it's you when I look na na na na / And it's you du du du du du du du / Sometimes you can't make it on your own". Even though Bono had not yet written the rest of the lyrics for this new segment, Lillywhite said: "all of a sudden the song was finished. That song had been around for the best part of five years and no one had ever said to them that it didn't have a chorus."

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