"The Wanderer" is the tenth and final track from U2's 1993 album, Zooropa. It features country legend Johnny Cash on lead vocals. It is one of a few U2 songs not to feature Bono on vocals at any point (apart from a country style howl at the end) - although The Edge does provide harmonising backing-vocals throughout the song.

The lyrics describe a man searching for God in a post-Apocalyptic world. Although neither U2 nor Cash ever performed it live in concert, U2 played it in a television special entitled I Walk the Line: A Night for Johnny Cash, following Cash's death in 2003. The special performance of the song featured The Edge adding dramatic falsetto background vocals.

As there is no guitar riff, Adam Clayton's synthesized bassline is the prominent musical sound throughout the song, although Larry Mullen's drumbeats can be heard clearly in the background.

The song is followed on the album by about twenty seconds of a constant siren sound.

An extended version of the song featuring an extra verse is included on the soundtrack to the film Faraway, So Close! The extended version is 5:16 in length.

The song was included on a 2005 Johnny Cash compilation album, The Legend of Johnny Cash.

"The Wanderer" is a song written by Ernie Maresca and originally recorded by Dion; it reached #2 on the Billboard Charts in 1962.

Maresca had co-written Dion's previous # 1 hit, "Runaround Sue", but originally intended "The Wanderer" to be recorded by another group, Nino and the Ebbtides. They passed on it in favour of another Maresca song, so Dion was given it as the B-side of his follow-up single, "The Majestic", a song which his record company had chosen for him. The record was turned over by radio DJs who preferred "The Wanderer", which duly entered the charts in December 1961 and rose to # 2 in early 1962. It also reached # 10 in the UK, and # 1 in Australia.

The song was recorded with an uncredited background vocal group, the Del-Satins, in a rockier style than Dion's earlier hits with the Belmonts. The Del-Satins were an established doowop group led by Stan Ziska (later known as Stan Sommers), who at the time were also contracted to Laurie Records, and who later formed the core of Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Dion said of "The Wanderer":1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.diondimucci.com/king_1.htm At its roots, it's more than meets the eye. "The Wanderer" is black music filtered through an Italian neighborhood that comes out with an attitude. It's my perception of a lot of songs like "_I'm A Man" by Bo Diddley or "Hoochie Coochie Man" by Muddy Waters. But you know, "The Wanderer" is really a sad song. A lot of guys don't understand that. Bruce Springsteen was the only guy who accurately expressed what that song was about. It's "I roam from town to town and go through life without a care, I'm as happy as a clown with my two fists of iron, but I'm going nowhere." In the fifties, you didn't get that dark. It sounds like a lot of fun but it's about going nowhere.

However, on Maresca's original demo of the song, the lyrics were "with my two fists of iron and my bottle of beer", and the change to "with my two fists of iron but I'm going nowhere" in fact seems to have been at the record company's insistence. id=59&release=718" target="_blank">http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=59&release=718

"The Wanderer" has been covered by many other popular singers and bands, including _Dee Snider, Gary Glitter, The Beach Boys, Leif Garrett, Status Quo, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Rabbitt, Delbert McClinton, Ted Chippington, Dave Edmunds, The Alley Cats, Avenue D and punk pioneers The Heimlich Experiment.

"The Wanderer" is a song by American singer Donna Summer. Summer made her name as the queen of the disco genre during the 1970s while signed to Casablanca Records. She left the label in 1980 following a dispute and became the first ever artist to be signed to the new Geffen label. Summer continued to work with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte who had produced the vast majority of her disco hits. However, disco by now had experienced a backlash - rock DJs were out of work and people were starting to hate disco. Rock music was by now becoming popular and the Summer/Moroder/Bellotte team had incorporated this into Summer's 1979 international bestselling album Bad Girls which had seen rock and several other styles of music merged into the disco beat. Summer's first Geffen album, The Wanderer however was a fully-fledged new wave/rock-flavoured affair.

Vocally, it was a return to her understated 1975 debut sound - soft, whispery phrases were the norm in this song, instead of the power belt she had used often since her Once Upon a Time album and Last Dance single.

This first single from the album became a big hit for Summer in the United States - peaking at Number 3 on the Hot 100 singles chart and selling over a million copies.