List of songs about the Cold War

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This is a list of songs about the Cold War.

• "1999" by Prince – "Yeah, everybody's got a bomb, We could all die any day", referring to nuclear proliferation.
• "2 Minutes to Midnight" by Iron Maiden – refers to the Doomsday Clock, the symbolic clock used by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In September 1953 the clock reached 23:58, the closest the clock ever got to midnight. This occurred when the United States and Soviet Union tested H-bombs within nine months of one another.
• "99 Luftballons" by German singer Nena – the song imagines a world where the release of 99 balloons triggers governments to scramble fighter jets to intercept them, ultimately leading to total nuclear annihilation.
• "Advice to Joe" by Roy Acuff, a pro-US song, mocking Stalin and bringing up the German invasion of the Soviet Union (1951)
• "Back in the USSR" by the Beatles – expresses the singer's great happiness on returning home to the USSR from the United States; political observers saw it as pro-Soviet (1968)
• "Balls to the Wall" – about human rights
• "Be Not Always", a 1984 song from The Jacksons' Victory LP
• "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" – written in reaction to the visit paid by U.S. president Ronald Reagan to a military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, on May 5, 1985
• "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen – about the Vietnam War and the mistreatment of veterans
• "Breathing" by Kate Bush – about a foetus aware of what is going on outside the womb and frightened by nuclear fallout, which implies that the song is set either during a nuclear war scare or a post-apocalyptic birth
• "Bullet the Blue Sky" – originally written about the United States' military intervention during the 1980s in the Salvadoran Civil War
• "Burning Heart" – the East versus West conflict is reflected by the fight in the boxing ring between Rocky and Ivan Drago
• "Button Pusher" by The Dubliners – a song about USAF "Missilemen" in underground ICBM bases, who would initiate the actual launch
• "Christmas at Ground Zero" by "Weird Al" Yankovic
• "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne – main theme is criticism of Cold War
• "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour
• "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" by Ultravox
• "Defcon" by Impakt (Dunk Yer Funk Records)
• "Defcon One" by Pop Will Eat Itself
• "Der Kommissar" by Falco
• "Distant Early Warning" by Rush
• "Dominion/Mother Russia"
• "Eighties" by Killing Joke
• "Epitaph" by King Crimson
• "Eve of Destruction"
• "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears
• "Everyday Is Like Sunday"
• "Fireworks" by The Tragically Hip – set in 1972 in Canada and Russia, it references the Canada–USSR hockey series, "crisis in the Kremlin," nationalism, and the "fake Cold War."
• "The Fletcher Memorial Home" by Pink Floyd
• "Forever Young" by Alphaville
• "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival – discusses the sons of "fortunate" men in America who avoided the draft to Vietnam thanks to their family's wealth or prestige
• "Games Without Frontiers"
• "God, Country and My Baby" is a 1961 song written by John Dolan and performed by Johnny Burnette.
• "Goodnight Saigon" – about the Vietnam War, by Billy Joel (1982)
• "Great Atomic Power" by Charlie Louvin – using the fear that nuclear bombs could wipe out the world to invoke repentance
• "A Great Day for Freedom"
• "Hammer to Fall"
• "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" by Bob Dylan – widely interpreted as a reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis, even though it was written before that date (1962)
• "Hello Vietnam" written by Tom T. Hall and recorded by Johnnie Wright, 1965
• "Heresy" by Rush
• "Heroes" by David Bowie – a love song depicting lovers kissing "by the wall"; many songs from Bowie's "Berlin Trilogy" albums invoke themes of the Cold War, as they were recorded in West Berlin.
• "Hiroshima"
• "Holidays in the Sun" by the Sex Pistols
• "I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" by Nik Kershaw
• "It's a Mistake" by Men at Work
• "Killer of Giants" by Ozzy Osbourne
• "Land of Confusion" by Genesis
• "Lawyers, Guns and Money"
• "Leningrad" by Billy Joel (1989)
• "Morning Dew"
• "Mutually Assured Destruction" by Gillan
• "New Frontier" by Donald Fagen
• "New Year's Day" by U2
• "Nikita" – a love song set against the East German border: the singer describes his crush on a beautiful border guard whom he cannot meet because he is not allowed into the country.
• "Nuku pommiin"
• "Oh Moscow"
• "Ordinary People" – a 1987 Canadian pop rock song by The Box drawing contrasts between life in the US and USSR
• "Party at Ground Zero" by Fishbone
• "Radio Free Europe" by R.E.M.
• "" by Bananarama, about escaping over the Berlin Wall to reunite with a lover
• "Red Star Falling" by Saxon
• "Renegade" by Steppenwolf
• "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones
• "Ronnie – Talk To Russia!" – cover says "Featuring Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev"
• "Russians" by Sting – about hoping the "Russians love their children too" because that could be the only thing to save them from destruction if the East and West keep provoking each other
• "Seconds" by U2
• "Since Yesterday" by Strawberry Switchblade
• "So Long Mom (A Song For World War III)", by Tom Lehrer
• "Soviet Snow", by Shona Laing
• "Stand Or Fall" The Fixx^[1]
• "State of the Nation" by Industry
• "Strange Frontier" by Roger Taylor on his Strange Frontier album; the song was included on the Greenpeace Non-Toxic Video Hits VHS and Laserdisc compilation
• "Stranger in Moscow" by Michael Jackson
• "Subterraneans"
• "This Cold War With You" by Floyd Tillman
• "The Tide Is Turning" by Roger Waters
• "Two Minute Warning" by Depeche Mode
• "Two Suns in the Sunset" by Pink Floyd
• "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood
• "The Visitors" by ABBA
• "The Wall" by Steppenwolf
• "Washington Bullets" by The Clash – from the Sandanista! album (a reference to the communist rebel group in Nicaragua), the song condemns American anti-communist military activity in Latin America, ending with criticism of other major superpowers during the era.
• "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel – a cleverly structured list of historical events of the Cold War period from the 1950s-1980s (1989)
• "Weeping Wall" by David Bowie – described by Bowie as intending to evoke the misery of the Berlin Wall (see the description of "Heroes" above)
• "West of the Wall" – a 1962 song written by Wayne Shanklin, which was recorded as a single by Toni Fisher
• "" by John Denver and Alexander Gradsky. This song protests against government expenditure in weapons instead of in their citizens. It was the first time an artist from the USSR got together with an artist from the US to sing about this matter.
• "When the Wind Blows" also by David Bowie
• "" by Bananarama, about the train that carried nuclear missiles across the US
• "Wind of Change" by Scorpions
• "With God on Our Side" by Bob Dylan – "I've learned to hate the Russians, All through my whole life, If another war comes, It's them we must fight"
• "World Destruction" by Time Zone
• "" by Udo Lindenberg

References[]