My finished essay

The LP by U2 - "War"

War was the third LP released by U2. It came out in March 1983, and it showed them as a mainstream band when it entered the British music chart at number one. The album discusses the signs of spiritual and religious influences on “War.” “The ability to use a range of powerful images, taking a song initially about sectarian anger, and turn it into a call for Christians to unite and claim victory over death and evil.” This message is shown by three main points: the songs and their lyrics, the cover, and the music and its sounds.
The lyrics in this album are very interesting because all of them show different influences on war. The album contains 10 songs which contain anger, passion and despair. The starting of this album has a strong song called "Sunday bloody Sunday." It’s about the conflicts in Northern Ireland, 1972. The song “seconds” is based on young boys leaving home to the war and about the rise and fall of revolutions. The song goes, “It takes a second to say goodbye, say goodbye.” The fourth song of this album is a bit of departure from the other tracks in War, as it is quiet, atmospheric song. It talks about someone who is rescuing other person from his life problems. The third and the fifth songs of this album talk about the end of the war and how everyone is excited that it’s over. The last song ‘40’ was used for several years as the closing song of all U2 concerts. The words “How long to this song” were each night sung by the fans while they were leaving the show.
The cover of this album symbolized how the band had moved on. It shows an aggressive picture of Peter Rowan, the same child shown on their first album called “Boy,” only now he is older. It describes how the boy is no longer innocent as he was before. The same producers of this album used Peter Rowan in another U2 album called “The best of 1980 – 1990” and created the similar emotional intensity that comes from the child’s expression. The back cover shows the total opposite of war. The producers used colored paper; the symbolism of this is more peaceful than anger and despair.
The feeling of this LP was totally different from the two albums that had gone before. They used raw guitars, pulsating drums and bass from Adam. All of them were combined together which gives us the idea that we can hear this in all the songs of this LP. The sound of most of the songs could be described as the sadness of war and disaster. In the songs “Red light” and “Surrender” they used a guest who played the back vocals. This was the first time when U2 used a guest on their records.
The music discusses the signs of spiritual and religious influences on "war". They used passion and despair in their lyrics and music sounds. The album "War" is one of the best albums that came out around the year 1980. They even achieved the first place on British music charts. By now U2 has around 25 albums and "war" could be still placed in the first three albums.