Top 10 Songs Inspired By Historic Events

Sublime
We know what you’re thinking - isn’t he singing “April 26th 1992” in the song? That… is correct. The story goes like this - Bradley Nowell sang the wrong date while recording the song, but he and his bandmates were so happy with the take, they just decided to keep it. The song commemorates the 1992 Los Angeles riots that took place following the acquittal of the four officers involved in the assault of Rodney King. Despite getting the date wrong, this song captured the spirit of righteous indignation felt by L.A. residents, who came together as a destructive force, transcending race to voice a collective anger in response to the verdict.

Bob Dylan
The year was 1966, and Rubin “The Hurricane” Carter’s boxing career had hit a rough patch. After a series of defeats, his career was up against the ropes. The career ending blow came outside the ring, however, when he was arrested for a triple homicide – a crime for which he was convicted on, despite little evidence. Maintaining his innocence throughout his incarnation, he remained wrongly imprisoned until 1985. Roughly halfway through his sentence, Bob Dylan wrote what would become one of his most famous songs, “Hurricane,” after meeting Carter and his supporters. The song showed unabashed support for the boxer, calling out the overt racial profiling behind the arrest and conviction.

Siouxsie and the Banshees
Nowadays, when someone hears the word “Pompeii,” the hit song by Bastille might come to mind. But nearly two decades earlier, Siouxsie and the Banshees paid homage to the city of Pompeii, its destruction, rediscovery and excavation in their song “Cities in Dust,” which served as the first single off their 7th studio album “Tinderbox.” Whose is better (or catchier) is up for debate, but there’s no denying that Siouxsie and co. paid their respects to this doomed city and its petrified citizens more directly than the contemporary indie pop rockers of Bastille. The video features lava flows, and the fossilized remains of people that have made this historical site so unique and haunting.

The Boomtown Rats
Written by Bob Geldof, this song explores the senseless act of violence committed by 16-year-old Brenda Spencer, who carried out a shooting at a San Diego elementary school in 1979. She killed the principal and the custodian, additionally wounding 8 children and a police officer. When asked why she did it, she replied, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” Geldof, and his bandmates in The Boomtown Rats, performed the new song less than a month later. It resonated so well with fans both in the UK and on their US tour, that it was released as a single rather than the b-side they’d initially imagined.

Deep Purple
It’s a true classic, and contains one of the most recognizable guitar riffs ever played. In fact, we ranked it as the 5th greatest guitar riff of all time. For years the popular song kept people asking what the song meant. However, as Jon Lord explains, it simply recounts their failed attempt to record at the closed Montreux Casino during its winter renovations. A flare was set off during the final live performance of the season, which resulted in the entire casino complex burning to the ground. They recorded elsewhere, but the image of the casino smoke creeping across the water of Lake Geneva was an image that stuck with bassist Roger Glover.

The Cranberries
No, it’s not about a zombie apocalypse. Sadly, this song, named after a fictitious monster, documents the all too real horrors of the bomb attacks perpetrated by the Irish Revolutionary Army in the early 90s. Written by the Cranberries while on their 1993 tour, it specifically commemorates the death of two young boys, Jonathan Ball and Tim Barry, killed by one of two bombs set off in Warrington, England that same year. The song was uncharacteristically grim and heavy for the band, but was nonetheless released as the lead single for their second album. Its powerful lyrics and music earned the band a Best Song award at the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards.

Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Lightfoot has often been called Canada’s greatest songwriter. “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald” is a heart-wrenching, 6 and half minute ballad that tells the tragic story of a massive freighter ship that sank on Lake Superior in 1975. Traveling from the Duluth, Minnesota area to Detroit, she was caught in a heavy storm, which brought with it hurricane-level winds and waves up to 35 feet in height. The last communication from the ship came at 7:10PM on November 10th - it read “We are holding our own.” Minutes later, she sank, taking all 29 men aboard with her.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
The 1970s may very well have been the golden age of protest songs. On May 2nd, 1970, the Ohio Army National Guard was called to quell a student demonstration that had turned violent. On May 4th, a day that would go on to be remembered as the “Kent State Massacre,” things turned deadly, when the guards opened fire on a group of students, killing four and wounding nine others. This elicited a number of musical reactions from artists such as Steve Miller Band, The Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen. Despite being banned on various AM stations, “Ohio” became THE counterculture anthem following the event.

U2
“Pride (In The Name of Love)” might’ve been met with mixed critical reception at the time of its release, but over the years, it has aged relatively gracefully. The reality is, try as he might, Bono could never sing about American civil rights nearly as successfully as he did the conflict in Northern Ireland on the track “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” The song refers to not only one but two “Bloody Sundays,” which took place in 1920 and again in 1972. In the lyrics, Bono laments the loss of life resulting from the long history of Irish-British conflict in Ireland. It’s considered one of their greatest songs.


Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.

“Run To The Hills” (1982), Iron Maiden
Laments the Violence of European Colonization in North America

“Joan of Arc” (1971), Leonard Cohen
Tells the Tragic Tale of This Heroic French Figure’s Fiery End

“Spanish Bombs” (1979), The Clash
Reflects on the Spanish Civil War

Don McLean
Almost as famous as this song is the artist behind it and his refusal to discuss the lyrics and their meaning. There’s no denying that “the day the music died” is a direct reference to one of the greatest losses in musical history. McLean has gone on record admitting that the first verse of the song was an exercise in expressing his long-stewing grief over the death of Buddy Holly, and that fateful plane crash that also took the lives of Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson Jr. But this song, in all its poetic nuance, is truly a series of snapshots - a sprawling pastiche of American popular culture and its landscape in the years following that 1959 accident.

Do you agree with our list? What are some of your favorite songs inspired by historical events?