The more things change, the more they stay the same. With declarations of war happening in 2023, echoes of past violence surface through records. One such recording is the classic U2 song “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” which was released in 1983 on the album, War.
Videos by American Songwriter
[RELATED: 3 Books Every U2 Fan Should Read]
Below, we lay out the history of “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” the battles it was born from, and what its lasting legacy has been.
The Drum Beat
Perhaps more than any lyric or bit of history, the most important aspect of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is the opening drum beat. Not exactly a swinging beat, the sound is something to stiffen your back up to and prepare to march. The beat, in fact, mimics a militaristic drum that soldiers in olden times may have heard on the battlefield as they prepared to head into combat.
U2 and frontman Bono knew this well, taking advantage of the tone and feel to set the stage for this anti-war song. Said the band’s drummer, Drummer Mullen, of the song in 1983:
“We’re into the politics of people, we’re not into politics. Like you talk about Northern Ireland, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday,’ people sort of think, ‘Oh, that time when 13 Catholics were shot by British soldiers’; that’s not what the song is about. That’s an incident, the most famous incident in Northern Ireland and it’s the strongest way of saying, ‘How long? How long do we have to put up with this?’ I don’t care who’s who – Catholics, Protestants, whatever. You know people are dying every single day through bitterness and hate, and we’re saying why? What’s the point? And you can move that into places like El Salvador and other similar situations – people dying. Let’s forget the politics, let’s stop shooting each other and sit around the table and talk about it… There are a lot of bands taking sides saying politics is crap, etc. Well, so what! The real battle is people dying, that’s the real battle”
Bloody Sunday
The song’s title has roots in a real-life event. On January 30, 1972, British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilian protestors in Northern Ireland, killing 14. The event came smack-dab in the middle of the period in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles,” which spanned from the 1960s to the late 1990s. While complex, the major dispute was over whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the U.K. or if it should join a unified Ireland. There were also strong religious undertones in the conflict, which pitted Catholics against Protestants.
The Song
The songwriting for this track began while Bono was on honeymoon. The group’s guitarist, known as The Edge, started working on music for the next U2 album, and the central guitar riff was born—kicking off the writing process for “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” When Bono returned, he reworked the song lyrics that The Edge had sketched out.
The violin on the song came from a chance encounter when local violinist Steve Wickham approached The Edge at a bus stop one day and asked if the group needed any violin on a record. Never hurts to ask!
The Lyrics
At its core, the song is a call to arms. Or, better said, a call to disarm. Sings Bono at its outset:
I can’t believe the news today
Oh, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away
How long, how long must we sing this song?
How long? How long?
‘Cause tonight
We can be as one
Tonight
Broken bottles under children’s feet
Bodies strewn across the dead-end street
But I won’t heed the battle call
It puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Alright, let’s go
The Legacy
Ever since the release of “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” U2 has often played the song during its epic live shows. Along with songs like “New Year’s Day” and “Pride (In the Name of Love),” the offering has helped grow the band’s reputation for human rights and political mindedness.
Bono during a show on November 8, 1987, in Colorado, captured in the documentary Rattle and Hum, speaking in the middle of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” said:
“And let me tell you somethin’. I’ve had enough of Irish Americans who haven’t been back to their country in twenty or thirty years come up to me and talk about the resistance, the revolution back home…and the glory of the revolution…and the glory of dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution! They don’t talk about the glory of killing for the revolution. What’s the glory in taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children? Where’s the glory in that? Where’s the glory in bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old-age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day? Where’s the glory in that? To leave them dying or crippled for life or dead under the rubble of a revolution that the majority of the people in my country don’t want. No more!”
Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images
