Acceptance Speech For "Album of the Year" -March 22, 1988-New York City

This is, uh, this is all very Celtic ( as he points to the stage set ). We appreciate it. It's actually is, um... it really is hard carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, and saving the whales, and uh, organizing summits between world leaders and that sort of thing. But we enjoy our work ( everyone laughs ). It's hard when 50 million people are watching not to take the opportunity to draw attention to the important things like South Africa and what's happening there; remarkable people like Desmond Tutu and what they have to put up with.
But tonight is maybe not the best night to do that so I'd like to talk about the music, soul music. That's what U2 wanted to make. It's not about being black or white, what instruments you play, or whether you use a drum machine or not. It's a decision to reveal or conceal and without it, people like Prince would be nothing more than a brilliant song and dance man that he is, but he's much more than that. People like Bruce Springsteen would be nothing more than a great storyteller, but he's much more than that. Without it, U2 would probably be better at using the Village Voice. That's a joke ( The Village Voice is a newspaper ). Sometimes they don't understand.
Without it U2 certainly wouldn't be here. But we are here and we wanna be here. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than New York City tonight. Thank you.
We'd like to extend our thanks to our producer Brian Eno without whom we wouldn't have made that record. Thank you.