"Zoo Station" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the opening track from their 1991 album Achtung Baby, a record on which the group reinvented themselves musically by incorporating influences from alternative rock, industrial, and electronic dance music. As the album's opening track, "Zoo Station" introduces the band's new sound, delivering industrial-influenced percussion and several layers of distorted guitars and vocals. Similarly, the lyrics suggest the group's new intents and anticipations. The introduction, featuring an "explosion" of percussion and a descending glissando for a guitar hook, was meant to make the listener think the album was mistakenly not U2's latest record or that their music player was broken. The song's lyrics were inspired by a surrealistic story about Berlin from World War II that lead vocalist Bono heard, when overnight bombing damaged the zoo and allowed animals to escape and wander around the city's rubble. Bono was also inspired by the city's Berlin Zoologischer Garten railway station and used it as a metaphor for a reuniting Germany. "Zoo Station" was performed as the opening song at every concert on U2's Zoo TV Tour. The song received positive reviews from critics, many of whom analysed the song as a representation of the band's reinvention. Writing and recording Following difficult recording sessions at Hansa Studios in Berlin in late 1990, U2 undertook the second phase of the recording sessions for Achtung Baby in Dublin. They struggled with the song "Lady With the Spinning Head" (later released as a B-side), but three separate tracks, "Zoo Station", "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" and "The Fly", were derived from it. The band ultimately decided to take "Zoo Station" in a more industrial direction than "Lady With the Spinning Head". "Zoo Station" came together near the end of the recording sessions when audio engineer Flood was mixing the song and introduced distortion to the drums. The song's direction was largely influenced by the production team of Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and Flood. Lead vocalist Bono had been disappointed with his vocals from early recording sessions for the album and told the production team, "Let's just try something that's gonna put me in a completely different place". After they distorted his voice to make it sound as if it were coming from a megaphone, Bono was inspired to sing in a persona, as the effect gave his vocals a different "emotional feel". Flood mixed the