This week's song of the week is "Seconds" from the War album. Bono has described "Seconds" as a piece of deliberate black humor. It is a track that weaponizes the 1980s dance scene to confront the absurd seeming inevitability of destruction, the capricious nature of power, and the negligence of peace in the shadow of nuclear terrorism. The song was played regularly throughout the War and Unforgettable Fire tours before going on a long hiatus until it was brought back for two shows during the band's Las Vegas Sphere residency.

"I think it (A Celebration) is a forerunner to War and a lot of the themes. It was great in Europe because... A song like "Seconds" people thought was very serious -- on the LP War "Seconds" -- it's anti-nuclear, it's a statement. 

They didn't see the sense of humour to it, it's sort of black humour, where we were using a lot of clichés; y'know "It takes a second to say goodbye", blah blah, and some people took it very seriously. And it is black humour, and it is to be taken sort-of seriously, but this song had the lines in it, "I believe in a third world war, I believe in the atomic bomb, I believe in the powers that be, but they won't overpower me". And of course a lot of people they heard I believe in a third world war, I believe in the atomic bomb, and they thought it was some sort of, y'know, Hitler Part II. 

And Europeans especially were (puts on outraged French accent) "Ah non! Vive le France!" and it was all like, all sorts of chaos broke out, and they said, "What do you mean, you believe in the atomic bomb?" (Bono speaking on 'Seconds' and 'A Celebration'--from a radio interview on KZEW Dallas, June 12, 1983)

...

Musically speaking, the track is the first to feature the Edge on lead vocals, as he delivers the first couple lines of the first verse. Edge began writing the song during Bono's honeymoon--the same period as "Sunday Bloody Sunday". From Matt McGee's U2: A Diary:

"Barry Devlin remembers Bono’s wedding 'I just remember that the wedding was tremendous fun. There was a lot of dancing, there was a lot of people bumping into each other. There was a lot of high spirits. And it was a kid’s wedding, you know. But it was a great day.' 

Bono and Ali spend their two-week honeymoon at Chris Blackwell’s “Goldeneye” property in Jamaica, the former home of James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Bono continues working on lyrics for U2’s next album. While Larry and Adam also take a couple weeks off , Edge continues working on new music; he comes up with ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ‘Seconds’ during this time. “ (McGee)

The scene of fertile creativity is floridly contrasted with the sense of impending doom and destruction. Bono, lingering in the clubs and hoping to hear "A Celebration", muses on the meaning of love and life. How can we derive peace out of a culture which claims to thrive in shallow cliche: totally summed up in the Cold-war era, Strangelovian image of a man pressing the button. These humanistic caprices, which became so thoroughly and absolutely real in the hell-fire of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, are just and only that--shallow, power-lusting and deceitful caprice. At the same time, the song seems to caution us: literally, "take a second, say goodbye" to the powerful who use the masses as a mere outlet for their malignance.

"And I was trying to say in the song, I believe in the third world war, because people talk about the third world war but it's already happened, I mean it's happened in the third world, that's obvious. But I was saying these are facts of life, I believe in them, "I believe in the powers that be BUT, they won't overpower me". And that's the point, but a lot of people didn't reach the fourth line." (Bono on "A Celebration") (KZEW Dallas)

...

Lyrics

"Takes a second to say goodbye, say goodbye, oh, oh oh
Takes a second to say goodbye, say goodbye
Oh, oh, oh, say bye-bye
Where you going to now?"

We open with the flippancy of a wide open future. With no real core of peace tying us down, we are beset to our most selfish and capricious desires. What Simone Weil calls "the animal's caprice" (Weil "Human Personality"). Those who advocate proliferation often simply fail to see the true potential for a better solution to the "ghost being let out of the bottle".

...

"Lightning flashes across the sky
East to West, do or die
Like a thief in the night, see the world by candlelight
Fall, rise and
Fall, rise and"

Again, imagery of destruction: falling and rising. A kind of ancient cyclicism lurking in the background. Breathing.

"In an apartment on Times Square
You can assemble them anywhere
Held to ransom, hell to pay
A revolution every day
U.S.S.R., G.D.R., London, New York, Peking
It's the puppets, it's the puppets pull the strings, yeah
Fall, rise and
Fall, rise and"

The main argument comes out, the deterrence logic that was supposed to make the whole thing rational no longer applies once anyone can build one. A sense of plurality overrides, universality of the issue. As if we are rising in philosophical register to a surprising image of puppets pulling strings. Again present are the images of the powers=that-be getting strung along by various strands of ridiculous logic that justify their perverse or tyrannical actions. There is a certain depth to this image, as opposed to a smokey pool-hall filled with billionaires deciding whether or not (or when) to destroy the world (CF Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent).

...

"Say goodbye, say goodbye
Say goodbye, say goodbye
Say goodbye"

The "say goodbyes" return, here straining at the ease at which decisions which impact billions can be made in an instant. This gives way to the little documentary cut-away. A scene from the documentary Soldier Girls in which a drill sergant trains children for some sort of war,

"Man: I wanna live a life of danger!
Children/girls: I wanna live a life of danger!
,,,"

This little cut-away might be the closest the song comes to putting its cards on the table. The solution to the trivals of nuclear proliferation might, like everything else, start with children. Until we reform education and the values we are taught from youth, the cruel wantoness of power described above will merely carry over from generation to generation, leaving destruction and and the snuffing of peace in its path. In some sense, to go back to the song's core irony, "saying goodbye" becomes the answer. But not to your friends, neighbors, teachers. and family, and certainly not for the powerful to the masses (the attitude the song skewers), but for the people who ultimately support the powerful. To reclaim the aforementioned "strings" and remake society in their own image.

"There was musical irony in the juxtaposition of The Edge’s jaunty acoustic pop confection with lyrics about the imminence of nuclear catastrophe. There's humour in the reference to a track by sland labelmates Troublefunk: “They're doing the atomic bomb/Do they know where the dance comes from?” And in a move that in many ways was ahead of its time, they lifted a sample from a 1982 TV documentary entitled Soldier Girls. 

'The whole spectacle of these girls going through this incredible routine of training seemed perfect to slip in here,' The Edge said in 1983. 'It's not obvious but if you listen close you can hear the refrain ‘I want to be an airborne ranger/I want to live the life of danger.’ It’s very disturbing.'" (Stokes)

...

"It takes a second to say goodbye
Say goodbye, oh, oh, oh
Push the button and pull the plug
Say goodbye, oh, oh, oh
Fall, missing is the rise and fall
Fall, I will rise and fall"

This verse returns to the borderline cynical retelling of the banal, borderline comically shallow thought process of those launching missiles. "Push the button and pull the plug": to end the world. Here, the earlier rising is questioned--is there only a fall? But Bono triumphantly reasserts "I will rise and fall". All things with time, the song defers to, at least a kind of, faith.

"And they're doing the atomic bomb
Do they know where the dance comes from?
Yes, they're doing the atomic bomb
They want you to sing along

Say goodbye, say goodbye
Say goodbye, say goodbye"

The dancing audience, even U2's own, makes the ending comedy somewhat self-directed. As they dance the "atomic bomb", do they realize this feeds into the very military-industrial complex played out above. There is a boyish, cool attitude here "if we can't get out of it, then we will dance.". This is underpinned and colored by the attitude and delivery of the final lines. "Say goodbye" becomes less of a joke and more of a solution. Say goodbye: again, not to your neighbors, not to (probably) your favorite bands, but to the malignant powerful, who wither away without the support of the masses. For a relatively overlooked track on one of the band's most critically acclaimed album, it offers provocative and deep taste of the punkish Peace and Love>War attitude which characterized the Irish-British punk counter-culture of the 1970s/80s.

“I've always felt physically ill at the concept of nuclear fall-out,” Bono says. “We are the first generation of people to have to live with that possibility. It’s all around us, it's in our heads. And it affects the way people feel about the world. | always saw it in apocalyptic terms. For the first time, it became possible — it is possible — to destroy everything.” (Stokes)

Sources:

U2.com
U2songs.com
U2gigs.com
U2: A Diary by Matt McGee
U2: The Stories Behind the Songs by Niall Stokes
U2 by U2
"War & Peace" by Adrian Thrills, New Musical Express, February 26, 1983
from a radio interview on KZEW Dallas, June 12, 1983, transcription by Scarlet of U2 Interviews (from U2interference: https://www.u2interference.com/threads/i-heart-the-album-war.196681/)

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