Analysis Of Sunday Bloody Sunday

The song ‘’Sunday Bloody Sunday’’ written by the Irish band U2 is really famous for having a strong political meaning and for being one of the most successful early work of the band. Released in … as part of the album ‘’War’’, not long after the ‘’Bloody Sunday’’ events which led to death of eighteen protesters who were demonstrating peacefully in order to get rid of the policies that were discriminating against/discriminatory policies imposed on Irish Catholics people specifically. To begin with, I would like to talk about the background that lead to this song, before moving on to what is shown by this song and its value from a musical point of view. The song’s title is in fact the same as one of John Lennon’s song written right after the

I think that focusing his work on the sound of U2 was the best thing he could do for his band and his stance as a musician is interesting: how many do we hear the same basic and generic pop or rock sound nowadays? In fact currently, too many bands don’t have their sound or songwriting that can tell directly who wrote a song. On the opposite let’s consider ‘’Sunday Bloody Sunday’’, a basic yet right to point structure as the core of this song improved by well-chosen violin or other instruments interventions at the right moment to support and balance the strong and harsh main theme give its unique feeling to this song. The main riff played before the chorus introduced by the repetition of a basic arpeggio sound really ‘’mean’’ and I believe that this sound is well-thought out because it doesn’t rely on overly saturated guitar sound (or a wall of sound) but rather on a bright and crunchy guitar sound that matches the militaristic battery pattern. Again what I like about that song it isn’t built around any intellectual or technical ideas. Moreover it introduced the Edge’s sound which made an impression on many guitarist and popularized the extensive of heavily modified guitar sound, especially the

Their band is composed of a singer, a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer, so nothing surprising up to now but they don’t play music in a mainstream way, as shown by the example of The Edge’s atypical way of playing music above-mentioned. They are often labeled as a rock band but they don’t sound like the majority of current rock bands because they are still thinking about their sound instead of choosing to stick to the all-purpose ‘’rock sound’’ made by saturated guitar supporting the singer backed by a powerful and striking bass/drum duo. Their songwriting is also a lot different as many rock songs are built around a guitar riff that can be heard throughout the song while they rely on many musical ‘’ideas’’ to build the song, the main riff being here only to give some unity to the song. From this perspective U2 is not a mainstream rock band and on top of that while many modern songs undergo an important mastering, U2 don’t have a pop or rock smoothened sound. It may sound strange to use the word ‘’smooth’’ to describe rock song but yet I think that because of the overused after processing of the sound in studio the ‘’rock’’ sound sometimes loses its raw striking power. Lastly the way U2 lyrics evolved is interesting: at the beginning they were tempted by a politically engaged artists stance but they quickly abandoned that way of thinking as shown by self-mocking phrases in