The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by rock band U2, released on 9 March 1987 on Island Records. Written and recorded in Dublin throughout 1986, it was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. The album is dedicated to lead singer Bono's assistant, Greg Carroll, who was killed in a motorcycle accident during the album's recording.

In contrast to the atmospherics and ambient experimentation of their previous album, The Unforgettable Fire, on The Joshua Tree, U2 aimed for a harder-hitting sound that used the limitation of strict song structures. Motivated by friendships with Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Van Morrison and a realisation that the band had a limited knowledge of music from before their childhood, U2 delved into Irish and American roots music. Thematically, The Joshua Tree depicts the group's love-hate relationship with the United States, influenced by the group's touring experiences in the country, American literature, Bono's travels to Africa and Central America, and the band's participation in the Conspiracy of Hope tour. Lyrically and sonically, the group wanted a "cinematic" quality that evoked a sense of location, in particular, the open spaces of America. They represented this in the sleeve's photographs depicting them in American desert landscapes and with a lone Yucca brevifolia plant ("Joshua tree").

The album received critical acclaim, topped the charts in over 20 countries, and sold in record-breaking numbers. According to Rolling Stone, the album increased the band's stature "from heroes to superstars". It produced the hit singles "Where the Streets Have No Name", "With or Without You", and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". The album won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1988. The Joshua Tree is frequently cited as one of the greatest albums in rock history, and it is one of the world's all-time best-selling albums, selling 25 million copies. In 2007, a remastered version of the album was released to mark the 20th anniversary of its original release.

Before The Joshua Tree, U2 had released four studio albums and were an internationally successful band, particularly as a live act having toured every year in the 1980s. The group's stature and anticipation for a new album grew following their 1984 album, The Unforgettable Fire, their subsequent tour, and their participation in Live Aid in 1985 and the Conspiracy of Hope Tour in 1986. U2 began writing for a new album in mid-1985 following the Unforgettable Fire Tour.

In the first half of the 1980s, the band had spent up to five months per year touring in the United States, and band manager Paul McGuinness recounts that The Joshua Tree subsequently came out of "the great romance" that the band had with the country. Lead vocalist Bono read the works of American writers such as Norman Mailer, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver so as to understand, in the words of Hot Press editor Niall Stokes, "those on the fringes of the promised land, cut off from the American dream".

In 1985, Bono participated in Steven Van Zandt's anti-apartheid Sun City project, spending time with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. When Richards and Jagger played blues, Bono was embarrassed by his lack of familiarity with the genre, as most of U2's musical knowledge began with punk rock in their youth in the mid-1970s. Bono realised that U2 "had no tradition", and he felt as if they "were from outer space". He was subsequently inspired to write "Silver and Gold", a blues-influenced song that he recorded with Richards and Ronnie Wood. Until that time, U2 had been antipathetic towards roots music, but after spending time with fellow Irish bands The Waterboys and Hothouse Flowers, they felt a sense of indigenous Irish music blending with American folk music. Nascent friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Richards encouraged U2 to look back to rock's roots and focused Bono on his skills as a song writer and lyricist. Dylan told Bono of his own debt to Irish music, and Bono's interest in music traditions was further demonstrated in his duet with Irish Celtic and folk group Clannad on the track "In a Lifetime".

The band wanted to build on the textures of The Unforgettable Fire, but in contrast to that record's often out-of-focus experimentation, they sought a harder-hitting sound within the discipline of more conventional song structures. Guitarist The Edge wanted the band to continue the European atmospherics of The Unforgettable Fire and was initially reluctant to follow the lead of Bono, who, inspired by Dylan's instruction to "go back", wanted a more American, bluesy sound. The group felt disconnected from the dominant synthpop and New Wave music of the time, and they wanted to continue making music that contrasted with these genres.

"We had experimented a lot in [The Unforgettable Fire's] making and done quite revolutionary things for us [...]. Well, we felt on this record that maybe options were not such a good thing. That limitation might be very positive and conducive. So we decided to work within the limitations of the song as a starting point. Let's actually write songs. We wanted the record to be less vague, open-ended, atmospheric and impressionistic. Make it more straightforward, focused and concise."

In late 1985, U2 moved to drummer Larry Mullen, Jr.'s newly-purchased home to work on material written during The Unforgettable Fire Tour. This included demos that would evolve into "With or Without You", "Red Hill Mining Town", "Trip Through Your Wires", and a song called "Womanfish". The Edge recalls it as a difficult period with a sense of "going nowhere", although Bono was set on America as a theme for the album.

Based on their success with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois on The Unforgettable Fire, U2 wanted the duo to produce their new album. Mullen was excited about working with them again, as he felt the pair, Lanois in particular, were the band's first producers who "really [took] an interest in the rhythm section". Lanois later spoke of the group's progress in musical proficiency since The Unforgettable Fire's recording. Mark "Flood" Ellis was engineer for the sessions, marking the first time he worked with U2. The band was impressed by his work with Nick Cave, and Bono's friend Gavin Friday also recommended Flood based on their work experiences together when Friday was a member of the Virgin Prunes. Flood recounts that the band had asked for a sound that was "very open... ambient... with a real sense of space of the environment you were in", which he thought were very unusual requests at that time.