Albums
War
In early 1983, U2 lead singer Bono tried to predict how listeners would react to his band’s new album: War, Bono told a reporter, would feel like a “slap in the face.” It was almost an understatement, as pretty much everything about U2’s third record—from its opening drum-march to its politically agitated lyrics to its title—was steeped in confrontation. Thanks to early breakout hits like “I Will Follow” and “Gloria,” U2 had made a name for themselves. Now, they wanted to make a point. Working again with Steve Lillywhite, who’d helped shape the jagged-glory sounds of Boy and October, U2 headed into Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios in 1982 with an arsenal of songs and no shortage of talking points. Bono and the other members of U2 (guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr.) were young men in their twenties, a time when the world should have felt wide open. And yet the news was serving up one early-1980s disruption after another: violence in Northern Ireland. Unrest across Europe. And a seemingly constant threat of worldwide nuclear annihilation. U2 decided to address those dangers head-on, lyrically and musically. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” opens War with a wallop: a flurry of military percussion, stabbing guitar lines, and anguished electric violin squelch, all of which serve to amplify Bono’s fury and frustration about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. “New Year’s Day”—the album’s first single, and an unlikely chart-climber—employs tight harmonies and some aptly chilly piano lines in what must be the only international pop hit to be inspired by the Solidarity movement in Poland. And you don’t have to dig too deep to find Bono’s nuclear fears surging through “Seconds” (“Push the button and pull the plug/Say goodbye, oh, oh, oh”). Yet for all the real-world ferocity that creeps into War, the album also finds Bono slowing down to find solace in his faith: “Drowning Man,” an eerie and etherea...