War

U2 turned the rage of Northern Ireland's Troubles into a battering march and made political fury sound like an arena chant everyone could shout back.

The snare that opens "Sunday Bloody Sunday" hits like a military drumroll, and The Edge's guitar stays clenched and ringing rather than pretty, refusing to let the horror soften into a slogan. "New Year's Day" builds the same way, its piano and bass locking into something you can march to even as Bono sings about broken vows and blood. What keeps the record from being a lecture is how it ends: "40" borrows a psalm and fades on a wordless chant, the band leaving the stage while the crowd carries the melody alone. That trick — the song outliving the singers — is how U2 learned to fill stadiums for the next thirty years.