Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think that World War One is the champion. There were rousing drunken cabaret songs like "Mademoiselle From Armentieres" and "Long Way To Tipperary", toe tapping march songs like "Over There" and "Pack Up Your Troubles", hauntingly sweet ballads like "Keep the Homefires Burning" and a huge array of comical, satiric songs such as "Oh What A Lovely War!", "I Don't Want To be A Soldier" or the "The Dying Aviator" which went:
A young aviator lay dying,
And as in the wreckage he lay,
To the mechanics assembled around him,
These last parting words he did say.
Take the cylinder out of my kidneys,
The connecting rod out of my brain,
From the small of my back
Take the crank shaft
And assemble the engine again.
The American Civil War would be a close runner up, everyone recognizes "Dixie" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as the theme songs of the two sides. There was also "Bonnie Blue Flag", "Tenting Tonight", "The Battle Cry of Freedom", "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" and "Marching Through Georgia"..and sorry rebel fans, but the Feds win the music competition easily, only "Dixie" and "Bonnie Blue Flag" from the above list were southern contributions, and "Dixie was composed by an Ohioan. The prettiest song was probably the ballad "Aura Lee", sung by both sides and a hundred years later given new lyrics and emerging as Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender."
World War Two.....ehh, not so much. What can you say about a war when the most popular tune among the Allies was "Lilly Marlene" which was an Axis song. "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" will get you up and dancing, but others seemed like vacuous, vaguely generic pop tunes..."Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", "Praise The Lord and Pass the Ammunition." I thought the Russians had the best tune.. "Katyusha" about a girl longing for her man who has gone off to war. (the multi barreled Katyusha rocket launcher was named after the song, not the song after the rocket launcher.) It is one of those songs that people hear and go "Oh, I know that song...its...its..." but don't figure out where they have heard it before. One place would have been in the film "The Deer Hunter". The wedding at the start of the film breaks up with all the guests exiting singing Katyusha.
There are a zillion and fifty two versions of it available on YouTube, this is my favorite..
The American Revolution....quick, name all the AR songs you can think of apart from "Yankee Doodle."
And that one song began as a British one, written to mock Americans and sung by British soldiers. A fad had sprung up in Great Britain where wealthy young men were dressing like dandies in the French style with powdered cheeks, ruse, lipstick and a competitive sense of accessorizing with every do dad and knick knack which could be pinned, sewed or otherwise attached to the clothing. This foo-fooery they called their "macaroni" and soon the word became the name for the young men engaged in the fad. So when you hear "Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni" it is the Brits mocking the uppity backwoods Yankees who think that they are becoming fashionable macaronis simply by putting feathers in their caps. The song was appropriated by the Yankees in one of those reverse pride deals...as in "We are proud to be humble, unaffected Yankee Doodles and not those useless self indulgent class conscious English dandies."
The Napoleonic Wars featured a number of stirring battle marches, my favorite being the Brit's "Girl I Left Behind Me" but while I recognize some of the music as having heard it before, for the most part I don't know the name of the tune. Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" was about the war, but it wasn't of the war, it was composed in 1880.
"Imagine" by John Lennon
"Revolution" by the Beatles
"Blowing in the Wind by Bob Dylan
"What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye
"Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone" by Pete Seeger
"Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones
"Imagine" by John Lennon
"Revolution" by the Beatles
"Blowing in the Wind by Bob Dylan
"What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye
"Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone" by Pete Seeger
"Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones
More directly about the war than any of the above...
"Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die Rag" by Country Joe and the Fish
"The Ballad of the Green Berets"..Barry Sadler.
And most directly as far as I was concerned since I was of draft age at the time...
Location: Prescott Valley,az summer/east valley Az winter
2,061 posts, read 4,135,306 times
Reputation: 8190
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sage 80
The Vietnam War produced some good ones:
"Imagine" by John Lennon
"Revolution" by the Beatles
"Blowing in the Wind by Bob Dylan
"What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye
"Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone" by Pete Seeger
"Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones
I cannot understand a word being sung, but the page included the lyrics to "Back In Control"...a triumph of subtlety.
Quote:
We are (back in control), force them to surrender
(take what is ours), restore law and order
(back in control), push them further out to sea
(falklands in our hands), back under british reign
Push them back further and out from the islands
Into our fleet that will stop their retreat
Mark their positions and call in the airforce
Harriers and vulcans strikes at our command
Orders from the iron lady, (get the islands back)
Failure will not be accepted, call for artillery strike, launch attack
We are (back in control), force them to surrender
(take what is ours), restore law and order
(back in control), push them further out to sea
(falklands in our hands), back under british reign
Sent to the islands to secure what is ours
Marching ashore in the cover of night
Hide until dawn and attack in the twilight
Shake them awake with the thunder of guns
Orders from the iron lady, (get the islands back)
Failure will not be accepted, call for artillery strike, launch attack
I guess it all depends on your age. The Vietnam war for me had some of the best music ever. I wasn't a hippie but grew up in that era and dated a lot of hippie chicks, so the music really meant (and still does) a lot to me. Quite a few great memories of that time, but the war was not one of them.
Don
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
