The idea for the song came from a kite-flying outing on Killiney Hill overlooking Dublin Bay that Bono attempted with his daughters. The outing went quickly awry when the kite crashed and one of the girls asked to go home and play a video game. Guitarist the Edge assisted Bono in writing the lyrics and felt they were actually about Bono's emotionally-reserved father, Bob Hewson, who was dying of cancer at the time: "[Bono] couldn't see it, but I could." Bono recalled a similarly ill-fated kite-flying outing in his own childhood with his father in the County Dublin seaside towns of Skerries or Rush.

The song was at first written with Bono's daughters in mind, or more generally, about a kite as a metaphor for someone or something escaping one's realm of control; the song is, more or less, about Bono realizing a day will come when his daughters will "no longer need him". During early promotional appearances Bono emphasized the song could be about letting go of any kind of relationship.

The music to "Kite" was equally evocative. The song begins with a string loop that the Edge had arranged. The verses feature the Edge playing a simple repeating slide guitar piece, while the chorus featuring an emphatic wail from Bono set against the Edge's churning guitar lines. The song concludes with an odd coda in reference to the new media. In concert the coda is sometimes repeated, with almost all instrumentation dropped out; Bono later said the coda was intended to pinpoint the narrative by "just setting it in time, saying that's the moment, and then leaving it behind you."

As is often the case with U2 songs, listeners heard various things from "Kite". Rolling Stone magazine saw it describing "the plight of a fraying couple; when Bono glimpses 'the shadow behind your eyes,' his lyric evokes the music's slanted conversations of melody and rhythm and guitar figures."The New York Times entitled their review of an Elevation Tour concert "Like a Kite, Grounded But Soaring To the Skies", and said the song was "music made after the fall," merging idealism with experience. A United Methodist Pastor in McGregor, Texas took the song's lines "I'm not afraid to die / I'm not afraid to live" and related it to his belief that Christians should not think of God as a stern judge and should not be afraid to live to the fullest, while a London memorial service honoring The Door magazine founder and religious figure Mike Yaconelli used it as the spiritual pivot of the service. Author Višnja Cogan partially echoed Edge's interpretation, seeing the duality of Bono's role as both father and son embodied in the song's interior climax "I'm a man, I'm not a child...."

...
Wikipedia