Sunday Bloody Sunday (John Lennon and Yoko Ono song) government into removing its troops from Northern Ireland, shortly before Lennon moved to New York. On 30 January 1972 at a protest march in Derry, 13 marchers were killed by members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. The killing was quickly dubbed "Bloody Sunday". 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 lyrics of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" express Lennon's anger. Ben Urish and Ken Bielen explain that the lyrics "start off with some nice rhetorical spins and a modicum of insight" but eventually
Sunday Bloody Sunday these lyrics, some listeners still considered it to be a rebel song—even one which glorifies the events of the two Bloody Sundays to which the lyrics refer. Commercially, the single had its biggest impact in the Netherlands, where it reached number 3 on the national charts. In the US, the song gained significant album-oriented rock radio airplay, and together with the earlier "New Year's Day" helped expose U2 to a mainstream American rock audience. Critical reception to the song was positive. In the Irish magazine "Hot Press", Liam Mackey wrote that "Sunday Bloody Sunday" "takes the widescreen view...a powerful riff