Seeger, who died last year at the age of ninety-four, was one of the all-time greats in folk music. “Well here I sit in this rice paddy/Wondering about Big Daddy/And I know that Lyndon loves me so./Yet how sadly I remember/Way back yonder in November/When he said I’d never have to go.” In 2007, Paxton rewrote the song as “ George W. Paxton criticizes President Lyndon Johnson for promising peace on the campaign trail and then sending troops to Vietnam. Tom Paxton, “ Lyndon Told the Nation” (1965). Ochs’s song of a soldier who has grown sick of fighting was one of the first to highlight the generational divide that came to grip the country: “It’s always the old to lead us to the war/It’s always the young to fall.” Phil Ochs, I Ain’t Marching Anymore (1965). McGuire’s impassioned rendition of the song’s incendiary lyrics-“You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’”-helps explain its popularity. By September it was the number one song in the country, even though many radio stations refused to play it. McGuire recorded “Eve of Destruction” in one take in spring 1965. In “What Are You Fighting For,” he warns listeners about “the war machine right beside your home.” Ochs, who battled alcoholism and bipolar disorder, committed suicide in 1976.īarry McGuire, “ Eve of Destruction” (1965). Ochs wrote numerous protest songs during the 1960s and 1970s. Phil Ochs, “ What Are You Fighting For” (1963). Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Blowin’ in the Wind” number fourteen on its list of the top 500 songs of all-time. Dylan debuted a partially written “Blowin’ in the Wind” in Greenwich Village in 1962 by telling the audience, “This here ain’t no protest song or anything like that, ‘cause I don’t write no protest songs.” “Blowin’ in the Wind” went on to become possibly the most famous protest song ever, an iconic part of the Vietnam era. With that caveat out of the way, here are my twenty picks for best protest songs in order of the year they were released.īob Dylan, “ Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963). So as much as I love Bruce Springsteen (“ Born in the USA”) and Billy Joel (“ Goodnight Saigon”), their songs don’t make this list. helicopters were pushed into the East Vietnam Sea, but my interest here is in songs recorded during the war. Vietnam has continued to inspire songwriters long after the last U.S. It was one of anger, alienation, and defiance.
Much as poetry provides a window into the Allied mood during World War I, anti-war songs provide a window into the mood of the 1960s.
#Billboard top 100 1969 series#
To mark the anniversary of the war that changed America, I am doing a series of posts on the best histories, memoirs, movies, and novels about Vietnam. Sunday marks fifty years since the first U.S.
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