List of songs with historical references
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Contents |
[edit] Criteria
- Not intended to be used in an educational environment
- Not about a then-current political event or political view (instead see List of protest songs, List of songs about politicians)
[edit] Songs which make many references to different historical events
- He Is I AM by Rich Dicas about slavery
- Fortunate Son by CCR about the Vietnam War draft
- "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)" by Simon and Garfunkel (1965)
- "American Pie" by Don McLean (1971)
- "Dreams" by The Game
- "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" by R.E.M. (1987) (Point of interest: both "A Simple Desultory Philippic..." and "It's the End of the World..." mention comedian Lenny Bruce.)
- "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies (1998)
- "Sleep Now in the Fire" by Rage Against the Machine (1999)
- "Soldiers" by Girlyman (2005)
- "Sympathy for the Devil" by The Rolling Stones (1968)
- "Washington Bullets" by The Clash (1980)
- "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel (1989)
- "Waterloo" by ABBA (1974)
[edit] Songs which mainly cover one historical event
- "8th of November" by Big & Rich
- About Operation Hump, a battle fought by the 173d Airborne Brigade in the Vietnam War in which 48 American troops died
- "19" by Paul Hardcastle (1985)
- About the Vietnam War
- "All For You, Sophia" by Franz Ferdinand (2004)
- About the Assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia
- "All Together Now" by The Farm(1990)
- About the Christmas truce of 1914
- "American Pie" by Don McLean
- About the 1959 plane crash known as "the Day the Music Died"
- "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" by Buffy Sainte-Marie - Wounded Knee
- "The Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)" by The Zombies (1968)
- "Bye Bye Badman" by The Stone Roses (1989)
- About the Paris Riots of May 1968
- "Children's Crusade" by Sting (1985) [1]
- "Cold Missouri Waters" by James Keelaghan
- About the 1949 Mann Gulch fire, a wildfire in Montana that claimed the lives of 13 firefighters
- "Eleanor" by Vigilantes of Love (1992)
- About Eleanor Roosevelt
- "Enola Gay" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (1980)
- About the Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
- "Goodbye, Blue Sky" by Pink Floyd
- About the 1940 Battle of Britain
- "Holland, 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel (1998)
- "The Intense Humming of Evil" by the Manic Street Preachers (1994)
- About the Jewish Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials
- "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by The Four Lads (later covered by They Might Be Giants) (1953)
- "Let Robeson Sing" by the Manic Street Preachers (2001)
- About the persecution of Paul Robeson by the McCarthyist witch hunts
- "Mothers of the Disappeared" by U2 (1987)
- About the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo whose children oppossed 1976 military coup in Argentina and subsequently kidnapped and never seen again
- "My Little Shirtwaist Fire" by Rasputina (1996)
- The song is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.
- "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band (1969)
- About the American Civil War.
- "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970)
- A response to the Kent State shootings in May of that year.
- "On D-Day" by Nate Borofsky (2000)
- About World War II.
- "P.L.U.C.K." by System of a Down (1998)
- The song is about the Armenian Genocide in 1915.
- "Pride (In the Name of Love)" by U2 (1984)
- About Martin Luther King, Jr., and specifically references his assassination in 1968.
- "Resplendent" by Vigilantes of Love (1999)
- About the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl Migration
- "Resume" by Vigilantes of Love (1994)
- About the Spanish-American War and the Rough Riders
- "Rock the Casbah" by The Clash (1982)
- "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple (1973)
- About a 1971 fire that destroyed a casino complex in Montreux, Switzerland, including a studio where the band was set to record an album.
- "Spanish Bombs" by The Clash (1979)
- About the Spanish Civil War
- "Sub Rosa Subway" by Klaatu (1973)
- About the building of New York's first subway, by Alfred Beach in 1870
- "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2 (1983)
- the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident in Derry and possibly also with reference to the Bloody Sunday of 1920 in Dublin
- " S.Y.M.M" by the Manic Street Preachers(1998)
- "When The Tigers Broke Free" by Pink Floyd - (World War II)
- "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot
- About the November 10, 1975 sinking of the cargo vessel SS Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior.
