Thread "Cold war pop songs about nuclear annihilation? " in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 7:11PM, Nov. 11, 2020

This has been interesting to me for a while. There are quite a few popsongs from the 80s with a hidden message about nuclear destruction

Nina's 99 Luft Balloons is about WW3.
It sounds likes such a fun tune, but it's about how both world powers were at such a hair trigger readiness that anything could have triggered world wide destruction and nothing would be left.

Shiny Shiny by Hazy Fantasy is also about WW3.
The shiny part of the title refers to how all that will be left after a nuclear blast is a shiny pool of glass… shiny like shoes. The song is about how there's no hope for the world so you're better off "pushing the button" and launching the missiles.

Breathing by Kate Bush is about experiencing a nuclear blast.
It has a double meaning about the danger of passive smoking to an unborn infant and relates that to a person dying from breathing fallout.

Know any more?

Posted at 12:11AM, Nov. 12, 2020

There were also several best selling novels from the 1980s. Red Army, Red Storm Rising and Team Yankee

Most stemmed from Sir John Hackett's 1978 bestseller The Third World War :August 1985 and its 1982 follow up The Third World War: the Untold Story.

Unlike the prophetic war books before WW1, or the nuclear war novels and movies of the 1950s-60s, I'm not sure if there's been any systematic study of this cycle of war prophecy.

99 Luftballoons can be interpreted as following Sir John Hackett's Warsaw Pact vs. NATO conventional war scenario. I studied the song at some length and used it to write a short story for my college creative writing class.

There were also board wargames and even a role playing game based on this cycle of books and songs. Twilight:2000

Posted at 12:11AM, Nov. 13, 2020

As for a song look up Christmas at Ground Zero by "Weird" Al Yankovic.

Posted at 4:11AM, Nov. 13, 2020

Pop Will Eat Itself - Def Con 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Wm4qXC_j4

the "big mac fries to go " is a reference to the amount of time it would take from when you found out to when you were dead. enough time to order a big mac and fries and maybe eat it - 15 minutes. I know because my 4th grade teacher told me so. he killed himself in front of the school a few years later. good guy.

Posted at 5:11AM, Nov. 13, 2020

Country Joe & the Fish "We're all fixing to die rag" - a Vietnam war anthem from Woodstock, was always a favourite.

I was convinced, by the time I was 14, after the "Cuban Missile Crisis", that a trigger-happy USA would get us all annihilated in a nuclear * W.W.III
so I did little homework in high school…. I'd already had (for me) a tragically laughable couple of years with "duck and cover" & similar "civil defence" videos. How to lie in a curb to reduce injury….bollocks like that. Depending on where you were (in my case Wales, U.K.) you'd have maybe a 15 minute warning. I think the best posture was the airline one - fold over in your seat…and kiss your arse goodbye !! B-)

"UNfortunately", we didn't all die, despite my fears…. so I never went on to tertiary education, but I was O.K. with that… ended up having quite a good life, eventually following a lot of mates, who had literally migrated to Australia in the hope of escaping W.W.III, in the '70s (I came in '80)

"Eve Of Destruction" was another old fave….. we're on the edge of that now, while the Orange Clown still has…how many?…days left in the W.H. and as head of the military….then we should be able to breathe easy B-)

p.s. * How come SO many people cannot pronounce "nuclear" ?? NO !!! NOT 'nuke-yew-lar', 'new…clear' !! B-)

Posted at 7:11AM, Nov. 13, 2020

Melt with you by Modern English, seriously it's about two lovers making out right at the moment of the bomb going off.

Games without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel, honestly I thought this more about the wars going on in the Congo and a reference to Vietnam and Cambodia but it could cover nuclear weaponary.

The Visitors by Abba, I just found out about this looking up suggestions and double checking some facts. It's, yikes! The musical beats are preppy, upbeat and bouncy but the lyrics are kind of, again, yikes!

One night in Bangkok by Murray Head, a surprising one because I love this song and always thought it was about a sort of power broker going through Bangkok.

It's a mistake by Men at work, honestly I original thought this one was about a romance gone bad but nope, it's about the end of the world.

Party at ground zero by Fishbone, the title pretty much says it all. A really upbeat tune wise about the end of the world, kind of sounds like a proto electro swing in the new wave age.

I love it.

That's all I can think of right now, I did some double checking and came across some new songs out of this topic. So, yeah?

[ADDISON:

Forever Young By Alphaville, another favorite of mine that I didn't realize it was suppose to be about the bomb dropping until I listen to the lyrics more closely.]

Snowstorm by Galaxie 500, I just found this one. And the comment section is saying, "it ain't snow he's talking about."]

Posted at 6:11PM, Nov. 13, 2020

Furwerk studio wrote:

Games without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel, honestly I thought this more about the wars going on in the Congo and a reference to Vietnam and Cambodia but it could cover nuclear weaponary.

Well "Jeux Sans Frontières" (see lyrics, literally Games Without Frontiers…in the U.K. it was called It's A Knockout), for those that don't know, was a Europe-wide T.V. show, back in the '70s. Towns would put up teams to compete with one another, on a knockout basis. National champions would then compete internationally. Odd games - I think only Japanese T.V. has anything like it, these days….

SO that's where Gabriel got the lyric title…. I think it was more an allusion to how international sport is essentially war without violence, but the violence is bubbling underneath.

A few of my surfing mates in Wales were on the local surf town team, around '75ish.

Posted at 6:11PM, Nov. 13, 2020

bravo1102 wrote:
As for a song look up Christmas at Ground Zero by "Weird" Al Yankovic.

That's a classic! Now I have it in my head, thanks a lot :p

Posted at 9:11PM, Nov. 13, 2020

Ah, the Eve of Destruction! An earlier song but a classic.
Games without Fronteirs is a fave.
Never knew that about Forever Young but it fits…
One Night in Bangkok isn't an obvious one. But yeah.

Hmm… a few more

Eveybody wants to rule the world, Tears for Fears
That one's sort of about ecological destruction, but really about how since everyone has the power to rule now through nuclear weapons that they'll fight to the death and finish the world.

The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades, Timbuk 3
This one sounds positive but it's ironic… Basically the "brightness" is the blast of radiation from a nucelar explosion…
I love songs that are ironic and not obvious :D

This world Over by XTC.
This was more obvious but it's interesting because it's about a new civilisation remembering the old one that anhilated themselves.

Posted at 2:11AM, Nov. 14, 2020

The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades, Timbuk 3
This one sounds positive but it's ironic… Basically the "brightness" is the blast of radiation from a nucelar explosion…
I love songs that are ironic and not obvious :D

Supposedly the song is from the point of view of the nuclear scientist who created the bomb.

Eve of Destruction was embraced by several units in Vietnam as their war anthem. It was painted on vehicles and aircraft adding more irony to the song.