King Crimson’s “Epitaph”. (Song and lyrics can be seen/heard below.)
“Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood?
Missed the edit window…dagnabit. It needs to be said that although the lyrics to Rush’s “Distant Early Warning” don’t really say anything about nuclear war (outside of the mention of heavy water and acid rain and ‘cruising under the radar’), it was the theme of the song’s music video.
10,000 Maniacs - Grey Victory
Please build a future, darling, with our bomb
Cherish and love it for the sake of
Earth bound kingdom come
Pink Floyd - Two Suns in the Sunset
The sun is in the east, even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset – could be the human race is run
If you have Fallout 3 or New Vegas for PC there is a mod called Conelrad Radio that plays through your pipboy. Its about 30 classic cold war songs intermixed with some PSA spots by stars like Bob Hope on what to do if a nuke should hit. Great stuff.
Beaten by the third post.
Camper Van Beethoven - Sweethearts
“And on a mission over China
The lady opens up her arms
The flowers bloom where you haved placed them
And the lady smiles, just like mom”
Sisters of Mercy - Black Planet
"So still, so dark all over Europe
And the rainbow rises here
In the western sky the kill to show for
At the end of the great white pier "
The Christmas classic “Do You Hear What I Hear?.” Among other things, the “star dancing in the night/with a tail as big as a kite” refers to a nuclear missile.
Fun Boy Three: The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum
I’m Afraid of the Russians. Used to get a lot of play on college radio in the 80s.
Orange Goblin - Nuclear Guru
King Goat - Nuclear Messiah
Bolt Thrower - World Eater (I’ll refrain from posting links to the other 2 dozen plus Bolt Thrower songs about nuclear war; this is my first “fav” song by the band)
Mother Corona - Nuclear Winter
Well, the very title refers to a joint US-Canadian radar project that was supposed to notify us immediately if Soviet missiles or bomber planes were incoming. So your interpretation makes sense.
My take, though, is that the song is not about nuclear war per se, but about Neil Peart’s fears and misgivings about the direction the United States was heading in the Reagan era. I think Peart worried about a LOT of things he saw going wrong in the USA (not surprisingly, while I liked the song, I dismissed the message as alarmist).
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Tesla’s “Modern Day Cowboy” was a pretty obvious dig at Ronald Reagan, who was widely perceived by liberals as a trigger-happy cowboy eager to launch a nuclear war with the USSR.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tesla/moderndaycowboy.htmlHow’d I forget this one: “It’s a Mistake” by Men at Work.
Didn’t see these two mentioned.
**Overkill **by Men at Work
I understand the lights referred to the fire flash that came with the nukes.
Prince’s 1999
No link to the song. Prince doesn’t like that sort of thing. We’ve all heard it though.
A couple by Bob Dylan:
“Talking World War III Blues”
“Let Me Die in My Footsteps (I Will Not Go Under the Ground)”
“A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” (Depending on how much you go for metaphor in place of explicit nuke dropping)
I was surprised to find that Wooden Ships is a nuclear war song! I never thought so, but it appears to be true. I guess I’m not good at this sort of thing.
But Overkill? I don’t see it!
David Crosby and Paul Kantner started out writing a song about how great it would be to live at sea on a boat, but the song took on a life of its own, and evolved into song about two soldiers from opposite sides who run into each other in the aftermath of a nuclear war.