Bono and the final lightbulb

"It means artistic freedom. Up until the point of Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum we've been in such a clear lane and almost to the point of becoming self-caricatures. And this album kind of exploded the myths and ideas about what we were as artists and who we were as people. It gave us the chance to in turn to become incredibly serious and political, and the next song do something very fun and rock and roll and humorous. The humor had been lacking in earlier U2 records." - Edge on what Achtung Baby means to him, 2021