“Gloria” by U2

"Gloria" opens U2's 1981 album October and was its second single, and it's the sound of a young band swinging for the heavens. Bono sings it and wrote the words, and all four members share the writing credit: The Edge on guitar, Adam Clayton on bass and Larry Mullen Jr. on drums. Steve Lillywhite produced.

The Edge's guitar rings and slashes, Clayton's bass pushes hard at the front and Mullen hammers away like he's trying to break through the floor, while Bono throws himself at every line. Then comes the twist: a chorus sung in Latin, taken from the liturgical "Gloria in Excelsis Deo", turning a rock song into something close to a prayer shouted at full volume.

It barely scraped into the UK chart at 55, among their lowest showings there, but it went top 20 in Ireland and New Zealand. Critics have split on it since. AllMusic held it up as proof of what happens when U2 get the message, the melody and the sound all pulling the same way, while Pitchfork heard real dynamism undercut by that Latin chorus.

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