Songfacts®:

• U2 played this song on their Elevation tour. Bono said it was written about a hangover - the night before appears to be a distant memory. "I had this idea of writing about the temporal nature of being, but setting it in a hangover gives it some comedy and earthiness that balances out the philosophical pretensions."
  
  Bono was running on two hours of sleep when he arrived at the studio to record the song. He improvised the lyric and melody.
• Bono mentions in the book U2 by U2 that the lyrics, "A little girl with Spanish eyes/When I saw her first in a pram they pushed her by," refer to his wife, Alison. She was a year younger than him in school, and Bono was often teased as being a baby-snatcher for dating a younger girl. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Sara - Minneapolis, MN
• Bono cites "In A Little While" as an example of U2 guitarist The Edge's ability to "revel in the non-extraordinary." In his memoir Surrender, he wrote: "This bluesy accompaniment will never get old because it's never felt new. The chords are classic gospel from Brian Eno."
  
  Brian Eno produced the track with Daniel Lanois.
• This was the last song Joey Ramone listened to before he died in 2001. Bono said that Joey turned a song about a hangover into something religious.
  
  Joey's brother Mickey recalled to Mojo (May 2011) how "Elevation" was playing as he watched Joey pass away: "It was just so applicable and sad, hearing these words, 'In a little while, this hurt will hurt no more.' The song ended and the nurse said, 'He's gone now.' He went with the song, I thought, to that place where songs go after they're played - wherever that is."
• A man dreams one day to fly
  A man takes a rocket ship into the sky
  He lives on a star that's dying in the night
  And follows in the trail, the scatter of light
  
  Bono explains the above tangent in the book U2 by U2: "It's the divine comedy. Christ described the assembled gathering as sheep, which I think is one of the best metaphors of mankind. There's such comedy to that. Have you ever watched a flock of sheep? No one is in charge. They change direction without any seeming logic. I love the idea of human beings (and don't take this personally because I'm one of them) believing they are in charge of their own destiny. For all the progress and all the enlightenment we have had, I do see us kind of stumbling around. There's a sort of audacious side to human beings that puts himself at the centre of the universe. I'm capable of it in a lot of ways, reasoning with the Almighty, doing deals. The big question, for me, is not if we believe in God but, much more importantly, does God believe in us?"
• As the 20th century came to a close, Bono was thinking of all the scientific accomplishments mankind achieved like putting a man on the moon and discovering groundbreaking medicines to cure diseases. But, he says, it still wasn't enough: "The world's problems are not going to be all sorted by science. These huge problems come down to poverty and depression and greed... All this stuff was in my head as I was writing a beautiful little pop song. The tangent makes the song for me. It should be called 'The Pilgrim and His Lack of Progress.'"