Several events during the sessions helped shape the conscious tone of the album, including the band's participation in the Conspiracy of Hope benefit concerts for Amnesty International, the death of roadie Greg Carroll, and lead vocalist Bono's travels to Central America.

In 2014, The Joshua Tree was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was selected for preservation in the US National Recording Registry, having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress.

[1][2] U2's manager Paul McGuinness recounted that The Joshua Tree originated from the band's "great romance" with the United States, as the group had toured the country for up to five months per year in the first half of the 1980s.

"[5] After recording vocals for Steven Van Zandt's anti-apartheid project Sun City in August 1985, Bono made an additional contribution to the album in October that was inspired by his burgeoning interest in roots music.

[2] Nascent friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Richards encouraged Bono to look back to rock's roots and to focus on building his skills as a songwriter and lyricist.

[14] The Edge was eventually convinced otherwise after discovering blues and country artists such as Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, and Lefty Frizzell on American public radio stations during the Unforgettable Fire Tour.

[13] To support his approach of having all the band members recording in a room together, Lanois eschewed having them wear headphones in favour of using monitor speakers due to their power; Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton used two each.

Meegan said of Eno's involvement: "Usually he was in first every morning and he'd start some dodgy sequence on his DX-7 [synthesiser]—it would be just like a cello line with no intentions of ever staying forever, just something to inspire people when they walked into the room.

He thought that the house sounded better than Slane Castle, and he was particularly impressed with the drawing room's "low mid-range ... where the music lives", a property that he believes was a major factor in the success of The Joshua Tree.

[24] Intended to help alleviate Ireland's unemployment crisis by raising funds and job pledges, the event was harshly criticised in the media for taking pressure off the Irish government to resist Margaret Thatcher's economic policies.

[29] After the funeral,[30] Bono and his wife visited Nicaragua and El Salvador, where they saw firsthand the distress of peasants affected by political conflicts and US military intervention, experiences which formed the basis of the lyrics for "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Mothers of the Disappeared".

"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" has strong gospel influences, with Bono singing of spiritual doubt in an upper register and Eno, Lanois, and the Edge providing choir-like backing vocals.

Bono wrote the lyrics for "Bullet the Blue Sky" after visiting El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War and witnessing how the conflict between rebels and the US-backed government affected local civilians.

[8] "Exit" portrays the thoughts of a psychotic killer,[32] although Clayton suggested that the line "He saw the hands that build could also pull down" is also a jab at the US government's conflicting roles in international relations.

His marriage was under strain, in part due to the album's long gestation period, the band were criticised by the Irish media for their involvement in Self Aid, and his personal assistant Greg Carroll was killed in a motorcycle accident.

[11][78] Biblical references are made on other songs like "Bullet the Blue Sky" ("Jacob wrestled the angel", images of fire and brimstone) and "In God's Country" ("I stand with the sons of Cain").

"[80] On the evening after the first day's shooting, Corbijn told the band about Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), hardy and twisted plants in the deserts of the American Southwest, and he suggested their use on the sleeve.

[68] For the front cover, Averill said that the framing of the band in the left half of the photo was meant to evoke the cinematography of film directors John Ford and Sergio Leone.

[88] Steve Morse of The Boston Globe echoed these sentiments in his review, stating, "It's another spiritual progress report, enwrapped in music that strikes a healthy balance between the lushness of their last album, 1984's The Unforgettable Fire, and the more volcanic rock of their early years."

It's the sound of people still trying, still looking..."[126] Thom Duffy of the Orlando Sentinel said the songs have "exultant power" that, "like the Joshua Tree's branches, stretch upward in stark contrast to their barren musical surroundings on rock radio".

[127] Q's Paul Du Noyer said that the source of The Joshua Tree's "potency lies in a kind of spiritual frustration – a sense of hunger and tension which roams its every track in search of some climactic moment of release, of fulfilment, that never arrives."

[128] John Rockwell of The New York Times was complimentary of the band for expanding its musical range but said Bono's vocals were "marred throughout by sobbing affectation" and sounded too much like other singers, resulting in a "curious loss of individuality".

[121] Robert Christgau from The Village Voice found the lyrics tasteful and the music "mournful and passionate, stately and involved", but lamented what he felt was pompous singing by Bono, calling it "one of the worst cases of significance ever to afflict a deserving candidate for superstardom".

"[118] Entertainment Weekly's Bill Wyman wrote that the album combined "easy-to-grasp themes – alienation and an outsider’s ambivalent view of America – with an extremely focused musical attack".

[184] In 2012, Slant Magazine ranked it 24th on its list of the "Best Albums of the 1980s", saying that The Joshua Tree's opening trio of songs helped "the band became lords and emperors of anthemic '80s rock" and that "U2 no longer belonged to Dublin, but the world.

[187] The Buffalo News said the record "made [U2] the first mainstream band since the Beatles to capture the spirit of the age in a manner that was both populist and artistically, politically and socially incisive",[188] while humanities scholar Henry Vyverberg considered it among the minority of attempts at "serious art" during a decade in which the rock genre largely "remained musical junk-food".

[189] From Josh Tyrangiel's perspective, The Joshua Tree began a "towering period" of U2's history lasting through 1993's Zooropa when they "made stadium-size art rock with huge melodies that allowed Bono to throw his arms around the world while bending its ear about social justice".

[195] The band's penchant for addressing political and social issues, as well as their staid depiction in Corbijn's black-and-white sleeve photographs, contributed to the group's earnest and serious image as "stone-faced pilgrim[s]".

[214] In rationalising the tour, the Edge cited the 2016 US presidential election and other world events for what he judged to be renewed resonance of The Joshua Tree's subject matter:[215] "That record was written in the mid-Eighties, during the Reagan–Thatcher era of British and U.S. politics.

[222] In addition to the concert, the super deluxe editions, available on CD, vinyl record, and digitally, include: B-sides and rarities; and remixes of the album's songs made in 2017 by Daniel Lanois, St Francis Hotel, Jacknife Lee, Steve Lillywhite, and Flood.