'I woke up at the moment when the miracle occurred
Heard a song that made some sense out of the world
Everything I ever lost now has been returned
The most beautiful sound I ever heard....'

'The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)' is the track that opens 'Songs of Innocence' and in the sleeve notes to the album, Bono recalls how the fledgling U2 first saw the band that inspired the song.

'I couldn’t sing with any of the jagged edges of the great rock or punk rock singers,' he writes. 'I sang like a girl....that felt uncomfortable until the Ramones happened to me as they must happen to everyone.'
In 1977 Larry, 14, Edge, 15, Adam and Bono, both 16, went to see the Ramones play in the state cinema in Dublin. 'We had no tickets and no money... My best friend Guggi had a ticket and he snuck us through a side exit he pried open. The world stopped long enough for us to get on it. Even though we only saw half the show, it became one of the great nights of our life....'

'After the Ramones,' writes Bono, 'I could try and be myself as a singer. I just needed to find out who that was...'

The single was revealed to the world on September 9th 2014 when the band performed at the Apple HQ in Cupertino - on the day Apple distributed Songs of Innocence to half a billion iTunes customers. A few weeks later, Gil Kaufman for MTV News, spoke to friends and family of Joey Ramone.