The Music of Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., a day when Americans celebrate the start of summer and honor the soldiers who died while in the service of the U.S. Armed Forces (and our allies worldwide). The holiday's origins can be tracked to 1861, when the graves of fallen soldiers began to be decorated in the U.S. The music of wars has an interesting history. Over the past 244 years, songs have captured the spirit of courage, the frustration over bad decisions and the mood of mourning. On our Memorial Day, here are nine songs that serve as emotional reminders of those who gave their lives in bygone wars—some noble and some a terrible mistake:

Here's composer William Billings' Chester from the American Revolution being performed by the U.S. Air Force Heritage of America Band...



Here's Mary Fahl singing the Civil War song Going Home...



Here's Nora Bayes singing Irving Berlin's Goodbye France after World War I in 1919...



Here's Glenn MIller and his Army Air Force Band with Johnny Desmond singing Long Ago and Far Away in German. The 1944 broadcast was meant to soften up German listeners as Allied troops took control of a country in ruins...



Here's Jimmie Osborne's God Please Protect America (1950) on the eve of the Korean War...



Here's Edwin Star performing War on Soul Train in 1970 during the Vietnam War...



Here's Neil Young's Let's Roll released in the aftermath of 9/11 and passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 who died trying to regain control of the plane from four hijackers...



Here's Nathan Fair's Fallen Soldier on the Iraq War...



And here's Seether's Fine Again from Fragile (2000), demonstrating that war songs are now in the hands of those who match existing recordings to footage of battle on YouTube...