Songoftheday 12/16/13 - One man caught on a barbed wire fence one man he resist, one man washed on an empty beach one man betrayed with a kiss...

U2 - "Pride (In The Name Of Love)"
from the album The Unforgettable Fire (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #33 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's Song of the Day is by the Irish rock group who came together in Dublin in the late 70s under a few different names before settling on U2. After a couple local releases, the band recorded their debut full-length album Boy, which came out in 1980. A track from the set, "I Will Follow", got noticed in the States, where it became a top-20 single on rock radio the following year. At the same time, their second album, October, was released, and the first single "Fire" reached the top-40 in the UK and #4 in their native Ireland.

In 1983, with the release of their third album, War, U2 found themselves more focused and tighter, with a sound and lyrics pacifist and revolutionary at the same time. The first single from the set, "New Year's Day", shot up to #10 on the British singles chart, and became their first success on American pop radio, reaching #53 on the Hot 100 and #2 on the rock format list. The album would go on to peak at #9 on the albums chart in the U.S. and sell over 4 million copies. This set them up for high anticipation for their next record.

That effort, The Unforgettable fire, came out at the tail end of 1984, and the first song promoted to radio and released as a single was the anthemic "Pride (In The Name Of Love)". Inspired by Martin Luther King (even though the lyrics got the timing of his death wrong), the song was buoyed more by lead singer and lyricist Bono's soaring vocals than the words themselves. It was produced by art-rock king Brian Eno and engineered by Daniel Lanois...

"Pride" became U2's first American pop top-40 hit in December of 1984, while scaling to #2 on the rock radio chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the record was huge, reaching the top-ten in Britain (#3), Ireland, Belgium and Holland, Norway and Sweden, Australia, and even topped the singles chart in New Zealand.

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Famed rock photographer Anton Corbijn also directed a rejected cut of the song..

Another version of the music video was filmed at a castle in Ireland...

In 1987, British stage star Barbara Dickson (Chess) recorded a more mainstream take on the song..

The most successful cover of the song came in 1992 when dance act Clivilles & Cole (the guys behind the C&C Music Factory) released it with Deborah Cooper and Paul Pesco on vocals, and it reached #54 on the pop chart and #6 on the dance club play chart in the U.S., while peaking at #15 on the British singles chart...