10 Famous Rock Songs Written So Fast You Won't Believe
9. 40 - U2
When he's not busy trying to save the world and invade your iPod with his face, Bono occasionally finds time to make some music.
He and the rest of U2 scored their first UK number one album in 1983 with War, home to such tracks as New Year's Day and Sunday Bloody Sunday. The final track on the record is 40, a spritely two minutes and 36 seconds of adapted lines from the Bible's Psalm 40.
Despite its short length, the song is a firm favourite amongst U2 nuts, and the band themselves often incorporate it into the closing moments of their live shows.
At a 1987 concert in Daly City, California, Bono regaled the crowd with the story of how 40 came to be.
"When we were making our third record, the War LP, we were being thrown out of the studio by the studio manager," he said. "We wrote this song in about ten minutes, we recorded it in about ten minutes, we mixed it in about ten minutes and we played it, then, for another ten minutes and that's nothing to do with why it's called '40'."
Moral of the story - always ignore studio managers.