The Song U2 Buried: How “Red Hill Mining Town” Became a Relic of a Band’s Moment of Doubt

The space between “With or Without You” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was not empty. It was occupied by a song U2 didn’t know how to handle, and a video the band decided no one should see. “Red Hill Mining Town,” a track written in response to the brutal 1984 British mineworkers’ strike, became a ghost in the middle of one of the best-selling albums of all time.

The Joshua Tree sold 25 million copies, won Album of the Year at the Grammys, and produced two U.S. No. 1 singles. But after the first chart-topper, the group stalled. A video was made for “Red Hill Mining Town” with Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, who would later direct The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire. The clip is a strange artifact: Bono lip-syncing in a coal mine, Larry Mullen Jr. hammering industrial metal in time, The Edge and Adam Clayton releasing canaries in slow motion. The band reviewed the footage and the song’s tour rehearsal performance, and then scrapped the entire single plan.

What replaced it was a simpler video shot quickly in Las Vegas for “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” That song became the band’s second consecutive American No. 1 and a permanent live fixture. “Red Hill Mining Town” went unplayed for decades. The Jordan video stayed in a vault until 2010, when U2 quietly uploaded it to YouTube. The song itself didn’t reach a concert stage until the 2017 Joshua Tree anniversary tour, premiering in Vancouver. Bono’s explanation was technical, not artistic: the chorus strained his voice in a way that threatened the next night’s show. “I sing a bit better—or at least I’ve learned how to sing,” he told the BBC.

The episode reveals something about the mechanics of a band at its commercial peak. The decision was practical, not ideological. But the result is a song whose absence defined it as much as its eventual, belated resurrection.