"Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by U2 | ||||
from the album All That You Can't Leave Behind | ||||
B-side | "Big Girls are Best" | |||
Released | 29 January 2001 | |||
Format | CD, cassette | |||
Recorded | 2000, HQ in Dublin, Ireland | |||
Genre | Rock | |||
Length | 4:32 (Album version) 3:42 (Radio edit) |
|||
Label | Island / Interscope | |||
Producer(s) | Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno | |||
U2 singles chronology | ||||
|
"Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" is the second single from U2's 2000 album, All That You Can't Leave Behind. The song won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 2002. Bono has said the song was inspired by a fictional conversation with his friend Michael Hutchence about suicide.
"Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" emerged while The Edge was working on a gospel-influenced chord progression on the piano.
U2's lead singer Bono wrote the song about the suicide of his close friend Michael Hutchence, lead singer of the band INXS. The song is written in the form of an argument about suicide in which Bono tries to convince Hutchence of the act's foolishness. Bono characterized the song as a fight between friends, which he felt guilty for never having with Hutchence. As Bono said in 2005, "It's a row between mates. You're kinda trying to wake them up out of an idea. In my case it's a row I didn't have while he was alive. I feel the biggest respect I could pay to him was not to write some stupid soppy song, so I wrote a really tough, nasty little number, slapping him around the head. And I'm sorry, but that's how it came out of me."
Mick Jagger and his daughter Elizabeth recorded backing vocals for the song, although these did not make the final mix.
Two music videos were filmed for the song:
One is directed by Joseph Kahn, features an American football game between the "Flys" [sic] and the "Lemons" filmed at the Houston Astrodome, and contains various inside jokes and references to the band's past, such as the team names themselves - which were the titles of two U2 singles released in the 1990s. The video features a brief cameo in the beginning from John Madden, whose lines also feature several U2 references. The main part of the video shows a placekicker named Paul Hewson—Bono's real name—forced to re-live a field goal he missed that cost his team the game.