You were Talking About the End of the World: Christian Reflections on the Music of U2 (IX)

One of the distinctive qualities of the music of U2 is their characteristic use of unresolved suspended chords to create tension and atmosphere. In musical theory, a major chord is made up of the first, third and fifth notes in a major scale, played simultaneously and in various combinations. A C major chord, for instance, is formed (“spelled”) by the notes C, E, and G, with C being the first note in a C scale, E the third, and G the fifth.

A major chord becomes “suspended” when the third note is raised by a half-step, or lowered by a full step, so that it becomes either the fourth or the second note in the scale, instead of the third. In our previous example, if we move the E note up to an F (increasing it a half step), the chord becomes Csus4, spelled C, F, and G. Similarly, if we drop the E to D, the chord becomes Csus2, spelled C, D, and G.

Suspended chords have an airy, dissonant quality to them. In musical terms, they create musical tension, and need their related major chord for resolution. In other words, a Csus4 chord is kind of “waiting” for a C major chord to “finish it,” and without the C major chord, it feels “unresolved.”

I doubt U2 was the first band to ever use unresolved suspended chords in their music, but they are probably one of the first to make them part of their signature sound. Early on in their career, they became notorious for playing suspended second and suspended fourth chords without playing the related major chord to resolve it, allowing the tension of the suspended notes to create an ethereal, uncentred atmosphere in the music. This was helped along by the Edge’s use of elaborate guitar effects which allowed him to have unresolved second and fourth scale degrees echoing distantly and repeatedly over major chord structures. 1984’s “Bad” was probably their first global hit to make successful use of this compositional technique, but you can hear hints of it as far back as 1980s “I Will Follow.”

I don’t have hard evidence for this, but my hunch is that this is another musical innovation that the band lent to Contemporary Christian Music. At least, the use of unresolved suspended chords are ubiquitous in the genre. Some of this is simply a function of musical skill. Most CCM is played primarily on guitar, and in many musical keys (E, D, and G, especially) suspended chord voicings tend to be easier to play than their major counterparts. But even if the compositional technique was not borrowed directly from U2, the fact that modern ears so readily “accept” the sound of the unresolved suspended chord is probably owing to the fact that we’ve become familiar with it, through the music of contemporary rock bands like U2.

I find it interesting, on a theological level, that contemporary Christian music has a bit of a penchant for unresolved suspended chords, insofar as one of the musical effects of the suspended chord is to create a sense of anticipation. As I said earlier, a suspended fourth note musically “points” towards the major chord to resolve the tension (with a 3rd note in the triad instead of a 2nd or 4th). Until that chord is heard, the listener is left with a sense of something left unfinished, or something still to come. And this is fascinating to me only because the Christian message itself is one that points continually to something still to come.

“He will come again to judge the living and the dead,” is how we say it in the Apostle’s Creed. Because along with the proclamation that Christ came, and the announcement that Christ is come, the Christian Gospel has always included the hopeful expectation that Christ will come again.

In theological terms we call this “eschatology,” the Christian conviction that the final word has not yet been spoken, nor will it be until the Lord returns in glory and all things are set right. And in musical terms, we might say, unresolved suspended chords are wonderfully fitted for making music in response to a distinctly eschatological message.

Put more simply: the fact that unresolved chords create a sense of tension and anticipation make them well suited for singing about the Christian message, which is itself filled with the tension and the anticipation of the Second Coming.

This is not to say that there’s something innately “spiritual” about an unresolved major chord, or even preferable to other musical forms as a medium for Christian music. Every form of musical expression, I think, has qualities that reflect some aspect of the Christian message. This is why we are enjoined always to sing a “new song” to the Lord, and to make music “skillfully” in response to him.

There is something to be said, though, for music that leaves us unsatisfied, yearning, even, possibly, uncentred in our worship of the God who has assured us that all is not yet as it will be, and there is still more, unimaginably more, to come. In his book Theology, Music and Time, musician and theologian Jeremy Begbie discusses this in terms of “delayed gratification” in music—the way music, when it is intentionally crafted to do so, can leave the audience emotionally aching for more. He suggests, on the one hand, that more Christian music ought to explore ways of doing this, given the delayed gratification built into our eschatology, and he laments, on the other hand, that so much modern Christian music fails to make us wait for much of anything.

It is worth noting in passing that much of the music currently employed in Christian worship deploys remarkably little in the way of delayed gratification. Admittedly, a congregation must be able to grasp quickly new hymns and songs if music is to enable and release their worship, but . . . rather too often goals are reached directly and predictably with a minimum of the kind of delay of which we have been speaking. Could we be witnessing here a musical articulation of the tendency in some quarters of the Church to insist on immediate rewards and not to come to terms with (potentially positive) realities of frustration and disappointment?

Begbie is writing about mainstream Christian hymnody there, I think, more than he is about Contemporary Christian Music, per se. What’s more, his words were penned back in 2000, a good two decades before the explosion the musical juggernaut that is today’s Contemporary Christian Music industry. Even so, I sometimes wonder if all the musical tension of all those unresolved suspended chords, chiming out in the anthems of todays most popular CCM hits, isn’t a reflection—if only a subconscious reflection—of the unresolved tension of our message itself: “Behold, he comes quickly, and his reward is with him.”

If there are any connections between all these dots—from the music of U2, to the songwriting of CCM, to the hope of Christian eschatology—it might be just one more way the band has helped the contemporary church find some new wineskins for its age old message message. And even if its only coincidence, I can't help but notice how apt it is to the message of the song, whenever I hear the unresolved tension of the Fsus2 in U2's “Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.” And in my more echatological moments I can't help but think: “Nor will you, until He comes again.”