“A Sort of Homecoming” by U2

"A Sort of Homecoming" opens U2's 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire, and from its first moments you can hear the band shedding the drill-sergeant rock of War. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois produced and engineered it, and they wrap the band in atmosphere: the martial pounding gives way to a subtler, polyrhythmic shuffle, the guitar sinks back into the mix, and everything shimmers.

Bono had turned into a voracious reader on the War Tour, working through fiction, philosophy and poetry, and it was the poet Paul Celan, who described poetry as a kind of homecoming, who gave him both the title and the heart of the song. Celan's deep spiritual doubt sits in tension with the certainty of faith the band had worn on its sleeve before. A live take turned up on the 1985 EP Wide Awake in America.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.