Ultraviolet (Light My Way)

[5] The lyrics of "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" are addressed to a lover, and imply that their relationship is threatened by some sort of personal or spiritual crisis, coupled with a sense of unease over obligations.

[9] Robyn Brothers suggests that ultraviolet light is "a metaphor for a divine force both unseen to the naked eye and ultimately unknowable to the human intellect.

"[13] Conversely, Steve Stockman, author of Walk On: The Spiritual Journey Of U2, sees "Ultraviolet" as being about Bono's wife Ali Hewson, and "how when he feels like trash, she makes him clean," but says there is good reason to interpret the song as being just as much about God.

[15] As such, the title evokes the image of black light or an invisible force permeating the darkness, whose connotations are spiritual and personal, as well as technological, reflecting themes of modern alienation explored elsewhere on Achtung Baby and its follow-up album, Zooropa.

[9] Dianne Ebertt Beeaff, author of A Grand Madness: Ten Years on the Road with U2, sees the song's narrator as longing for assistance from any source, religious or secular: "This is a real plea, a bleary worn-down drained wish to disappear.

"[10] Atara Stein sees "Ultraviolet" as one of several selections on the album in which the protagonist in crisis has elevated his lover into an object of worship, desperate for her to "return to her initial role as his guide and salvation.

[8][18] In Achtung Baby's running order, "Ultraviolet" serves, with the other two songs at the album's end, "Acrobat" and "Love Is Blindness", to explore how couples face the task of reconciling the suffering they have imposed on each other.

[11] Rolling Stone noted that "Ultraviolet" was one of the album's songs that hearkened more to the group's past than their new sound, saying that Edge's "soaring peals on [it] are instantly recognizable".

[23] Entertainment Weekly called it the album's highlight, "where Bono's soaring voice and the Edge's pointillistic guitar meld to create one of those uplifting moments we listen to U2 for".

"[26] U2 chroniclers Bill Graham and Caroline van Oosten de Boer also see the song as a throwback to the group's earlier sound, but say that "the band doesn't sufficiently develop the initial idea to warrant the five minutes of 'Ultra Violet'".

The name Ultra Violet was also given to one of U2's improvised mid-1990s business initiatives, a joint merchandising venture with MCA Inc.'s Winterland division; the partnership soon dissolved, but not before producing several hundred thousand pairs of Bono "Fly" glasses.

[30] Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone characterised its essence as "desperately searching" and said that it helped transition the Zoo TV show towards an ambiguous, introspective conclusion.

[8] During Zoo TV, almost all of the numbers from Achtung Baby (and the rest of the set list) were augmented by sequencers to fill out the sound; on "Ultraviolet", under-the-stage keyboard tech Des Broadberry playing a sampled guitar figure in the background during Edge's solo parts.

It was introduced by a robotic voice reading excerpts from the poem "Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden, followed by Bono's appearance wearing a laser-studded jacket on a darkened stage illuminated only by a glowing steering wheel-shaped microphone that hangs from above.

[33] In an appearance that avoided both their recent singles and best-known hits, "Ultraviolet" was played as the group's third number, in full 360° Tour staging style as the show's end credits scrolled.

At night in a large outdoor stadium filled with people, a structure with four legs curving upward and meeting in a central spire is bathed in indigo and violet light, as a large circular video screen below the spire but above a stage shows a dark-clothed man with arm raised singing into an illuminated circular microphone.
The U2 360° Tour staging of "Ultraviolet" features the claw-like stage awash in indigo and violet light.
A man wearing a jacket with lights embedded in the sleeves and side, and is singing into a microphone with an illuminated circular structure around it, like a steering wheel, that he is holding with one hand.
Performances of "Ultraviolet" on the 360° Tour consisted of Bono wearing a laser-embedded suit and singing with a microphone embedded into a glowing steering wheel that hung from above.