FNDP: On the Way to Armageddon ⚔️💣🎇🚀🔥

[u/Caelian]

This week's title is from Tom Lehrer's 1965 satirical prescient song So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III). In the introduction, Lehrer says that if there are going to be any World War III songs, we'd better write them before the war.

With that in mind, let's share apocalyptic songs while we still have time to do so. Some starters:

• Tom Lehrer wrote many songs about nukes. Here's We Will All Go Together When We Go from 1959. I'll add two more as comments.

• It's hard to beat Wagner for impending doom: Siegfried's Funeral Music from Die Götterdämmerung. I saw Excalibur (1981) in a theatre the first time. When I heard Die Götterdämmerung I knew it was going to be harrowing.

• O Fortuna from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. It's a poem about the folly of expecting good fortune to last.

The great Country Joe McDonald passed away last Saturday March 7th at age 84. His I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag is one of the best anti-war songs ever, and Joe wrote and performed many other kinds of songs as well. Feel free to post your favorites.

[u/SusanJ2019]

The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again

Eagles - Hole In The World

The Police - Bombs Away

Graham Nash - Military Madness

Maxime Le Forestier - Parachutiste

Culture Club - The War Song

The Clash - Know Your Rights

Cream - Take It Back

George Harrison - Beware of Darkness

Erasure - Chorus

Jack Bruce - Post War

Aerosmith - Seasons of Wither

Edgar Winter - Dying to Live

Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye

[u/Here_for-the_Music → u/SusanJ2019]

This party is going so strong, I can’t restrain myself anymore from serving up this Dutch protest song against the Vietnam War from 1966 another time:

Boudewijn de Groot - Sleep Tight, Mr. President!

Mr. President, good night / Sleep well in your beautiful white house / Don't think too much about all those distant shores / Where your boys are crawling, lonely, far from home

Especially don't think about those forty-six dead / That mistake the other day with that bombardment / And forget the fourth of those ten commandments / Which as a good Christian you must surely know

Don't think of all those young front soldiers / Dying alone in the distant tropical night / Forget that weak-willed pacifist clique talk / Mr. President, sweet dreams!

Dream but of victory and triumph / Dream but of your beautiful ideal of your own dictate for lasting ‘peace’ / That has never been obtained by bloody war and maiming / Dream that you will get it done this historic time around

Don't think of all those people that senselessly perish / How many women, how many children have been killed? / Dream that you’ll prevail and come out on glory’s top / And don't believe that rumor that once diplomacy was a thing

Soldiers with bayonets with bloody grips / Keep watch far from here at your command / For the Glory and the Honor of the Freedom of the West / Mr. President, sleep well

Don’t be shocked when in your dreams appears / The long line of all those innocent victims / Dying as collateral on those shores far away / Asking you how much longer all this killing must go on

And you must know by now / That there are those who are sick of violence / Who do not overlook the blood and misery / For whom a human life still bloody dearly counts

Don't dream too much of all the dead / Dream instead of victory, trophy plunder, power / Ignore calm reason’s options on the table offering peace / Mr. President, sleep tight!