Bloody Sunday

There are two Bloody Sundays in Irish history. The first was in 1920 when British troops fired into the crowd at a football match in Dublin in retaliation for the killing of British undercover agents. The second was on January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers killed 13 Irish citizens at a civil rights protest in Derry, Northern Ireland. The song is more about the second Bloody Sunday.

The lyrics are a nonpartisan condemnation of the historic bloodshed in Ireland. Bono’s lyrics in the song are more about interpersonal struggles than about the actual Bloody Sunday events. Bono used to introduce this at concerts by saying, “This is not a rebel song.”U2 has played several times at Croke Park, the site of the 1920 Bloody Sunday in Dublin.

Bono started writing this with political lyrics condemning the Irish Republican Army (the IRA), a militant group dedicated to getting British troops out of Northern Ireland. He changed them to point out the atrocities of war without taking sides