They shall not grow indie as we that are left grow indie

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Two events got me thinking about this - "Pipes Of Peace" on Popular, and Radiohead's rush-releasing their charity new song about recently-dead WWI veteran Harry Patch.

Have there been any good modern day pop songs about World War One?

The criteria being:

- must be specifically about World War One (not just war in general) (but being about it in the video counts, cf PoP)
- must have been recorded and written after World War TWO

There's no particular reason there SHOULD be good modern WWI songs of course, any more than there should be good modern Napoleonic War ones. But are there?

The field as I understand it:

- Radiohead's thing
- "Pipes Of Peace"
- "Stop The Cavalry" (unless it's too general)
- "All Together Now" by The Farm.

Good grief.

Comments

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Gotta be some about Poppy Fields (oh no, Coldplay...)

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can claim Stop The Calvary as a WWI song; mentions Churchill, iirc, and nuclear war?

I depending on your definitions of both pop and good, there's This Song For You (http://www.lyricsdomain.com/3/chris_de_burgh/this_song_for_you.html) by Chris de Burgh.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

There's some songs June Tabor sings, written by Eric Bogle: "And the band played Waltzing Matilda" is abt Gallipolli; also "No Man's Land" -- both terrific

Both are folk -- or neo-folk or whatever you'd call it (Bogle is his 60s)

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

10,000 Maniacs did a song based on Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori...

I'll get me coat.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Tori Amos - Yes, Anastasia (http://www.last.fm/music/Tori+Amos/_/Yes,+Anastasia) (full track at last.fm) - really about Princess Anastasia but refers to the Russian troops of WW I.

/tenuous

[infov0re.livejournal.com]

There's "Passchendale" by Goodbooks, but it is in NO WAY good. It's horrible, really.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Also, that's why everyone was making Harry Patch refs on Twitter yesterday? UGH.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I had no idea "And The Band Played..." was so recent - that's the best so far certainly.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I suspect Mr Patch wd not have enjoyed Radiohead's new "waxing".

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha I was going to say that.

Also, 'Ghost Of You' or whatever it's called by MCR has a WWI video.

[mrs-leroy-brown.livejournal.com]

ha! I was just googling the lyrics to that song!

[thebopkids.livejournal.com]

Similarly I think Virginaia Astley had a go at "Futility" which made it onto an NME tape.

[thebopkids.livejournal.com]

Is "No Man's Land" AKA "The Green Fields of France"? That's an amazing song. Tom, weren't you all over some Piano Magic record in this broad area some time ago? Maybe that was WW2, I never heard the thing.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

Winston Churchill was actually one of the most important British political figures during World War I, bearing responsibility for the Gallipoli fiasco, and later serving as minister of munitions. The reference to nuclear war, however, is another matter…

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Cor yes well remembered - I had forgotten it myself and never listened to it since. It was a whole album - Artists Rifles!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

NML = tGFoF yes

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"move him into the sun"

[thebopkids.livejournal.com]

I went and looked at the wikipedia page to check this in the intervening minutes. The version I first knew was by The Men They Couldn't Hang, and that remains canon for me.

The real shocker for me was that it seems Skr3vvdr1ver did a version. DO. NOT. WANT.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

A lot of English f4scism is explicitly built out of hostility to WW1: Larkin's dad, for example (one of Larkin's key models wz Wilfred Owen).

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Blimey, in that case I'm not sure whether there's any good songs about WWI written before WWII! There is inevitably a Wiki category for them, which includes The Bells of Hell go Ting-a-ling-a-ling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bells_Of_Hell_Go_Ting-a-ling-a-ling) (also notable for the planned film version(!)).

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

There was an ILM thread about this topic just a few months ago:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=71210

Here's what I nominated (leaving out pre-WWII ones):

"Green Fields Of France," Dropkick Murphys (and plenty of Irishmen before them, I imagine)
"Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron," the Royal Guardsmen
"Dough Boy Joe," MX-80 Sound
"One," Metallica (or at least its video)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I think that most twee indie overshoots WWI and hits the Civil War.

I would hesitantly include Tom Waits's "Day After Tomorrow," which isn't about any war specifically but "feels" a bit All Quiet on the Western Front-like. At least that's what I said about it (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2052-future-soundtrack-for-america/) when it came out.

Except this lyric, though it definitely predates Iraq (which I don't think anyone complains about being cold), also rules out WWI:

"It is so hard
And it's cold here
And I'm tired of taking orders
And I miss old Rockford town
Up by the Wisconsin border
But I miss you won't believe
Shoveling snow and raking leaves
And my plane will touch tomorrow
On the day after tomorrow"

two tribes

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Zang_Tumb_Tumb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zang_Tumb_Tumb)

[richaod.livejournal.com]

Though Paschendale (spelled that way) by Iron Maiden is EPIC.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

'Futility' by The Ravishing Beauties (http://fruitierthanthou.blogspot.com/2007/11/ravishing-beauties-john-peel-session.html)! (ooh I wonder if those mp3s are still available?)

[koganbot]

In regard to that ILM thread: I second the nomination of the Zombies' "Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)": is about WWI and is very good, an odd little art-pop number with church organ and lyrics that are anticlerical and effectively grisly: masses of flies come down to feed off of and memorialize the dead along the towns of the western front, the point being made well and made quickly without weighing down the song heavily with its art.

Butcher's Tale

[koganbot]

Here it is on YouTube.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure you mean modern folk, not neo-folk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neofolk)! Trust me :-)

On the topic of neo-folk WWI tunes (of which there are more than a few, obv), Andrew King has covered both Rudyard Kipling's "Gethsemane" and A E Housman's "Polly On The Shore".

(Good choices though.)

I'm pretty sure And Also The Trees did at least one, but I can't remember which one it was.

An Italian-speaking friend told me that she thought one of the tracks on (Italian goth band) Artica's album 'Natura' was about trench warfare, but since I know 0 Italian, I can neither confirm nor deny this.

Stretching the definition of "pop" here quite a bit, I agree. I keep thinking The Decemberists ought to have done one, but they seem to have done every *other* sort of military experience instead!

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

And yet neither infov0re's spelling of the Goodbooks song nor the Iron Maiden spelling is correct. The Goodbooks song is actualy correctly titled 'Passchendaele'.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

I really like it. The tune is a bit indie and boring, but the lyrics are quite evocative, in a Wilfred Owen-y kind of way. Perhaps it's because I'm a history graduate, and I've visited the trenches and cemeteries of Passchendaele.