"Sick Puppy" (1990)

Demo Song

Background Information

“Sick Puppy” is a working title of a song developed for Achtung Baby.

“Sick Puppy” first got mentioned in a 1990 interview with Bono published in issue 13 of Propaganda Magazine titled, “Bono: Songwriting by Accident”:

The song from that recording which most clearly points to the next U2 is “God Part II”. As usual, while the ‘pieces’ do not have fixed titles as yet, many of them have ‘working titles’ – some of them with a peculiar resonance, as Bono reveals. “Provisional titles” he calls them, insisting that they wouldn’t make sense to anyone but the band, but when pressed he lets slip a couple as teasers. “Well, we’ve got a really great soul song, in the tradition of Sly and the Family Stone, called “Sick Puppy”…I’m not sure if that’ll be the title when we make the record.

“Sick Puppy” appears in a list of songs being worked on for Achtung Baby in November 28, 1991 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine (Issue #618). Accompanying the article is a picture of the whiteboard with a number of in progress songs. The photo describes this as “Producer Lanois’s progress chart at Dogtown Studio, outside of Dublin.”

On the chart you can see “Mysterious Ways” listed, and below it is a note that says “It’s All Right + Sick Puppy” which are the two songs that were combined when they developed “Mysterious Ways.”

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