Songfacts®:

• The lyric is culled from a book called The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie, who wrote it from the perspective of a main character writing a song. He sent Bono a review copy of the book and asked him to look over the lyric to tell him if it worked. Bono took it a step further: He and the band put music to the lyric and turned it into a real song. Rushdie is credited as the lyricist, with U2 credited for the music.
• Rushdie describes the lyric as "a sad elegy written by the main male character about the woman he loved, who has been swallowed up in an earthquake: a contemporary Orpheus's lament for his lost Eurydice."
• "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" first appeared on the soundtrack to the movie Million Dollar Hotel, which Bono wrote with Wim Wenders, who directed it. Bono makes a cameo in the film.
  
  The movie, released in February 2000, was a flop and the soundtrack sold poorly, so U2 included the song on their All That You Can't Leave Behind in October.
• Daniel Lanois, who along with Brian Eno produced the All That You Can't Leave Behind album, played the pedal steel guitar on this track.
• This song wasn't the first time Salman Rushdie teamed up with U2. When U2 played Wembley Stadium on August 11, 1993, Rushdie came out of hiding to join the band on stage.