![]() The Beatles Bible considers the song a "powerful rocker". ![]() Lewis also provides a mixed assessment, stating that even Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness "might blanche at some of the assertions," the song is "helped by a spirited funk rock jam, where Yoko's eerie banshee wail on the chorus conjures up curious similarities with The Specials' " Ghost Town". Besides criticising the hyperbole of the later lyrics, they also feel that Lennon detracts from his message when without reason he uses Brooklyn pronunciations of "learn" as "loyn", "burn" as "boyn" and "turn" as "toyn" in one of the verses. Reception Īlthough Urish and Bielen praise many aspects of the song, they do not feel it quite succeeds. Producer Phil Spector applied his wall of sound approach to the song to create a dense production. Urish and Bielen consider this an effective means of "reminding listeners that the tragedy continues even when not the focus of attention and will not go away on its own" but Beatle biographers Chip Madinger and Mark Easter feel that effect was better used on "Strawberry Fields Forever". ![]() The song has a false ending where the song appears to fade out but then returns, similar to the effect at the end of the Beatles' " Strawberry Fields Forever". Ono screeches the words "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as background vocals to the refrain, in a manner that Rogan considers "distracting" but Urish and Bielen find "emotionally appropriate" and Uncut writer John Lewis finds particularly effective. The instrumental parts include "wailing" guitars and saxophones played, respectively, by Lennon and Elephant's Memory's Stan Bronstein, both of which Spizer finds "weak". Beatle historian Bruce Spizer describes the "heavy drums and percussion" as giving the song "a reggae-styled military march sound". But Urish and Bielen describe the music as "suitably chaotic and rambunctious" to the message. ![]() Rogan feels that the melody "left a lot to be desired". If people on the street think about it, that's all there is to it. My songs are not there to be digested and pulled apart like the Mona Lisa. I don't say "My God, what's happening? We should do something." I go "It's Sunday Bloody Sunday and they shot the people down." It's all over now. And being what I am I react in four-to-the-bar with a guitar break in the middle. Here I am in New York and I hear about the 13 people shot dead in Ireland and I react immediately. Lennon explained the lyrical polemics to New Musical Express journalist Roy Carr as: Music critic Johnny Rogan finds "unintended polemic humour" in the verse: You anglo pigs and scotties Sent to colonise the North You wave your bloody Union Jacks And you know what it's worth How dare you hold to ransom A people proud and free Keep Ireland for the Irish Put the English back to sea. The lyrics also express the wish that Falls Road, Belfast should be free forever at a time when the Falls Road Curfew was still in recent memory. Among the controversial lyrics are suggestions that the "Anglo pigs and Scotties" need to go home and the reference to concentration camps ( Long Kesh was commonly compared to a concentration camp amongst contemporary critics of the Government's internment policy). Music critic Paul du Noyer similarly described the refrains as being too simplistic to address the complexity of the longstanding Irish-British problems, although he acknowledged that they were "heartfelt". Beatles biographer John Blaney felt that Lennon's need to express his disgust at the incident caused him to write a song that is "a piece of pro- Republican propaganda that ignored the historical facts in favour of emotional blackmail". Ben Urish and Ken Bielen explain that the lyrics "start off with some nice rhetorical spins and a modicum of insight" but eventually devolve into "lyrical hyperbole" as Lennon's anger takes over. The lyrics of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" express Lennon's anger. Lennon, who was living in New York at the time, was enraged by the massacre and wrote "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as an angry response. The killing was quickly dubbed "Bloody Sunday". On 30 January 1972 at a protest march in Derry, 13 marchers were killed by members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. Lennon had sympathies for the Roman Catholic Irish minority in Northern Ireland and had joined a protest in London on 11 August 1971 that attempted to pressure the British government into removing its troops from Northern Ireland, shortly before Lennon moved to New York. The song addresses the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972 and is one of two on the album that addresses the contemporary Northern Ireland conflict, " The Luck of the Irish" being the other. " Sunday Bloody Sunday" is a song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono that was first released on their 1972 Plastic Ono Band album with Elephant's Memory, Some Time in New York City.
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