| "Seconds" | |
|---|---|
| Song by U2 | |
| from the album War | |
| Released | 28 February 1983 |
| Recorded | September–November 1982 |
| Studio | Windmill Lane Studios (Dublin) |
| Genre | Rock, post-punk |
| Length | 3:10 |
| Label | Island |
| Songwriter(s) | U2 |
| Producer(s) | Steve Lillywhite |
"Seconds" is the second track on U2's 1983 album, War. The track, with its recurring lyric of "it takes a second to say goodbye", refers to nuclear proliferation. It is the first song in the band's history not sung solely by Bono, as the Edge sings the first two stanzas.
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. Bono said that he was watching this documentary while he was waiting in the green room in Windmill Lane Studios and he recorded it. The band felt it would fit well into the song as unsettling evidence of soldiers training for an atomic bomb explosion.