Thanks everyone for sharing your War memorie
War was such an influential album to so many of us during those formative, adolescent years. Maybe it's so special to us who were teens because this was an adolescent album for U2.
To me, Boy, October and War are the "purity" trifecta. The music, songwriting and production is just so raw and well, pure. Some may say "unpolished" but there is beauty in unrefined things.
War was my 3rd U2 album - I bought it in the fall of 9th grade. And by the fall of 11th grade, the cassette was worn out. Remember when that was a sign of how passionate you were as a fan? (And for the record, I still have the cassette. I also have it as a gold plated CD).
War will always be a winter album to me. I remember making my friends listen to it in my parents' living room with heavy snow falling outside on a gray December afternoon; holing up in my bedroom on those long winter nights listening to it over and over while my mom yelled at me about the bass; making my dad and brother listen to it on our many ski trips; a classmate telling our social studies teacher on a class ski trip that there was a song called "Sunday Bloody Sunday" on War (we studied the Russian Revolution in 9th grade, which also had a "Bloody Sunday". I'm sure that social studies teacher is still being regaled by students with the fact that U2 sings that song
And to this day, I REALLY hope that guy realizes that the SBS U2 sings about is not the Russian SBS).
The album varies between punk, rock n' roll and poetry:
- Primal and punky - SBS, Seconds, The Refugee, THBAO
- Rock and roll - NYD, Red Light
- Melancholic and yearning - Drowning Man and Surrender
- Pure lyrical and musical perfection- 40
