Studio album · No. 1
Boy Songwriting Credits by U2
Produced by Steve Lillywhite · Engineered by Paul Thomas, Kevin Moloney, John Dent
Holds writing credit on 11 of 11 tracks
Authorship Breakdown 11 / 11 documented
Scored across the 11 tracks with documented writers, by whether U2 carries a lyricist or composer credit.
Share of the 11 tracks where a band member is credited, by role.
By the Numbers
Every song on Boy carries the same writing credit: U2. The sleeve splits nothing out, so the four members share the music and the words equally on all eleven tracks, which is why the composer list here is the same four names from "I Will Follow" through to "Shadows and Tall Trees". That collective line does not mean the work was evenly divided in the room. Bono wrote the words to "I Will Follow" about his mother Iris, who died when he was 14, and the album's themes of adolescence and mortality run through his lyrics rather than anyone else's. The Edge's contribution is easier to hear than to read off a credit: he played the entire record on one Gibson Explorer through two Vox amps and two Memory Man echo units, trading blues phrasing for ringing chords and sustained harmonics. Steve Lillywhite produced every track and is credited for sound effects as well, which puts some of the record's texture on him rather than on the band.
U2's debut, cut at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin between July and September 1980 with Steve Lillywhite producing. The songs were pulled from a live repertoire of about forty, two of them re-recorded from the band's first release, the Three EP. Lillywhite chased sounds rather than polish, putting Larry Mullen Jr. in a stairwell to track drums and miking smashed bottles and cutlery scraped against a spinning bicycle wheel.