Seconds (song)

There is a break of approximately 11 seconds in the song at 2:10 featuring a sample of a 1981 documentary film titled Soldier Girls.

"'Seconds' is particularly pertinent today because it's about the idea that at some point someone, somewhere, would get their hands on nuclear material and build a suitcase bomb in an apartment in western capital.

It's a pleasant juxtaposition, but as the song's subject matter becomes clear – the insanity of nuclear blackmail, where, as Bono Vox puts it, 'the puppets pull the strings'—you realize that this jolly noisemaker is no more an innocent plaything than is the one in Günter Grass' The Tin Drum.

"[3] In 2008, for a review of new reissues of the band's first three albums, Pitchfork editor Joe Tangari wrote "'Seconds' rides a hypnotic bass line to a final verse that conflates nuclear standoff with a dance craze".

[4] "Seconds" accordingly became the first song to feature the Edge on lead vocals live when it debuted at the first concert of the War Tour on 26 February 1983.