Two posts on Bloody Sunday

1)A great piece by Warwick McFadyen, It begins:

• Few songs take their title from that of a historical event, the occasional mining disaster aside. Even fewer can draw a line directly to that event and yet resonate in the wider world. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2 is a child of its time, yet its themes enabled it to survive, indeed grow stronger, in the years...

-Read all here

2)A great piece by Bono in NY Times:

• Read it here

PS That second piece includes a footnote, a comment on the shapeshifting (sans framejacking) of the lyric:
"Over time, the lyric will change and grow."
Cool to see a comment on this from the man himself. We have seen some good thoughts on the adaptability/Shift in Sitz Im Leben in U2 music..( see "Sampling and Reframing: The evolving live concert performances of 'Bullet the Blue Sky'" by Steve Taylor)
link

"Over time, the lyric will change and grow" calls to mind Bono's comment to Rolling Stone on "rhema":
"It changes in the moment" (love Beth's comments on this).

Bono:

A footnote (some light relief), November 1983:
U2 is in a studio in Dublin, playing its new song, “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” to the record company. The melody is a good one but the lyric is, in hindsight, an inarticulate speech of the heart. It’s a small song that tries but fails to contrast big ideas ... atonement with forgiveness ... “Bloody Sunday” with Easter Sunday. The song will be sung wherever there are rock fans with mullets and rage, from Sarajevo to Tehran. Over time, the lyric will change and grow. But here, with the Cockneyed record company boss at the song’s birth, the maternity ward goes quiet when the man announces that the baby is “a hit”... with one caveat: “Drop the ‘bloody.’ ‘Bloody’ won’t bloody work on the radio.”

(note: Beth noted Bono got the year wrong! He's time-traveled with the song too much)