U2 — Gloria

JUL 01 1981 · 12:00

U2 — Gloria (1981) Director: Meiert Avis Era: Post-Punk / New Wave Dawn (1981) - The opening year of MTV coincides with U2's second promotional video, emerging from Dublin's docklands at the precise cultural moment when the music video format was becoming a commercial necessity for rock bands. High curatorial value as a document of U2 at their most unpolished and geographically rooted — before production budgets, theatrical staging, or concept-driven video making. As the first U2 video to achieve MTV rotation and one of the earliest rock videos in the channel's library, it functions as a primary source for the symbiotic emergence of MTV and the British/Irish post-punk rock video tradition. The video has never appeared on any official commercial U2 video release, increasing its archival rarity. Context: Released in October 1981 as the opening track and second single from U2's second album October, 'Gloria' arrived just two months after MTV's launch in August 1981. The video's heavy rotation on the nascent cable channel gave U2 their first significant American television exposure at a time when very few acts had promotional videos prepared. The Grand Canal Docks location — directly across the water from Windmill Lane Studios where the band recorded — grounds the video in a specifically Dublin post-industrial geography. The song's Latin liturgical chorus ('Gloria in te Domine / Gloria exultate') reflected U2's engagement with Christian spirituality during this period, a theme that distinguished them from their post-punk contemporaries. The docklands setting, raw outdoor filming, and unpaid crowd of onlookers give the video an accidental-documentary quality that underscores the band's pre-commercial authenticity. Director notes: The video was written and directed by Meiert Avis and filmed in October 1981 on a barge in Grand Canal Basin (Grand Canal Docks), Dublin, near Windmill Lane Studios — the same docklands location used for the October album cover photograph. The video opens with what appears to be an underwater or water-surface-level shot of the band, before rising to reveal U2 performing on the barge. For approximately the first minute, the framing conceals the waterborne setting; an overhead shot at the one-minute mark reveals the barge configuration. In the final minute, a crowd gathers — including children blowing bubbles, figures dancing on a mast, and a larger dancing audience on the docks. The video became the first U2 promotional clip to receive heavy airplay on MTV, which had launched only months earlier in August 1981. The audio track used in the video is the same as the album version. The video has never been included in any commercial U2 video release. Songfacts notes it was the first U2 video shot outdoors.