In Achtung Babys 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. The song features a Motown sound-style "telegraph key" rhythm, which gave it the feeling of a pop song. This and the "baby, baby" refrain gave the song a throwaway quality that fit in with Achtung Babys mission of deconstructing U2's image. Paradoxically, the arrangement also featured U2's 1980s "repeato-riff" guitar style and the rest of the lyric was a serious love song that dealt with themes of anxiety and despair. Bono has described "Ultraviolet" as "an epic U2 song [but] the key of it left my voice in a conversational place and allowed a different kind of lyric writing." Producer Eno wrote that a combination of opposites within each song was a signature characteristic of Achtung Baby and that as part of that, "Ultraviolet" had a "helicopterish melancholy". In Achtung Babys album package, "Ultraviolet" is presented next to a photograph of a crumbling Berlin building that has a Trabant parked in front of it. Reception 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". Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that compared to much of the album's grim depictions of personal relations, "Ultraviolet" depicts love as a haven. In contrast, U2 write John Jobling sees "Ultraviolet" as continuing the album's theme of "two people tearing each other apart", despite its "spectral pop" arrangement. The Boston Globe heard echoes of The Rolling Stones' 1966 song "Out of Time" in the chorus of "Ultraviolet". 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". Cedarville University literature professor Scott Calhoun says of one lyrical portion of "Ultraviolet", "That's so evocative and works as beautiful writing away from the music. It can stand on its own on the page and, of course, it's even more effective when accompanied by the music." Other writers were less enthusiastic. Q magazine felt that the song was weak and that "Bono falls back on his old habit of trying to be 'inspirational' by banging up