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War Cries From Home

Leon Westerhof
Music & Culture IRL
Published in
5 min readMay 8, 2023

For as long as we can remember, music has been used as a way of conveying our emotions. Everything between joy and sorrow, good times and bad can, has, and will be conveyed through music. This is because music can broadcast messages when words simply fall short. Whether it’s a gentle melody or a powerful symphony, music stimulates our senses and connects with our deepest feelings. During the years 1961 and 1973 over 550,000 American citizens were sent to fight in the Vietnam War, 58,220 of which ended up never coming home. Despite these egregious efforts, Vietnam was controlled by communist rule no more than a year after the end of the war. The United States failed its objective and killed nearly 60 thousand of its own people in the process. These casualties could have been avoided had the government listened to the voice of its people, begging to bring their fellow Americans home and to stop forcefully sending people to their death. This voice was recorded many times over, now available for us to reflect on. During the years 1961 and 1973, American artists produced music voicing their disapproval of the war, these songs would go on to be influential to the efforts of protestors at that time as well as today.

While musical commentary is not exclusive to the Vietnam War, few times has it been as significant. Music became a prime platform for public opinion due to the accessibility from home and the versatility of viewpoints from artists of all different races and genders. Many songs came out in direct response to political happenings. One such event would be Johnson winning the 1964 election by promising not to send more troops to Vietnam — after which he continued to send troops in complete disregard of his promise. This betrayal would go on to be criticized in multiple songs, including Tom Paxton’s “Lyndon Johnson Told a Nation,” and Phil Ochs’ “We Seek No Wider War.”

Arguably the most famous song opposing the Vietnam War is Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” which came out in 1969 at the height of war protests in America. “Fortunate Son” criticizes the class differences between the soldiers who were being drafted to fight the war and the rich politicians keeping the war going. The song states, “It ain’t me; it ain’t me; I ain’t no senator’s son, son. It ain’t me; it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, no,” implying that members of the U.S. government were sending people away to war but safeguarding their own sons and letting them dodge the draft.

As the war continued, these songs of protest became a genre of their own, later being named “antiwar” music. While these songs were subject to a lot of censorship at the start of the war, as the war continued more antiwar music started to break through the top charts. Many of these songs are still very well known today. In the late 1960s when antiwar music was first starting, the songs followed a more mellow peaceful protest path. During the early 1970s as the war was winding up, the music became more harsh in criticism of the United States military.

The importance of these songs lies not in what they were trying to accomplish at the time, but in the message they have sent along in the years since the conclusion of the Vietnam War. Many of these protests are still widely played today, and while they may not have succeeded in stopping the Vietnam War, their popularity today could very well affect future drafting decisions. Songs like “Fortunate Son,” “Paint it, Black,” “Imagine,” and “For What It’s Worth” have been streamed on Spotify a combined 2,786,587,452 times since the platform was launched in 2008. This number does not account for the billions of streams on radio stations, apple music, and other platforms.

“Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)

Creedence Clearwater Revival was an American rock band from California active during the Vietnam War. The lead singer of the band, John Fogerty, was drafted by the United States Military in 1967, however was never actually deployed to Vietnam. “Fortunate Son,” written by Fogerty, is to this day one of the most influential pieces of antiwar media. The song is a criticism of the upper-class politicians who were drafting and deploying young men from the lower classes to go fight in a war they wanted no part of while the upper class had the privilege of staying at home.

“For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield (1966)

Buffalo Springfield was an American rock band from Los Angeles California between 1966 and 1968. One of the members would eventually be arrested for joining the Navy and skipping town to avoid the draft. Buffalo Springfield’s most popular song, “For What It’s Worth,” is still popular to this day and is one of the most famous antiwar songs of the Vietnam era. Being released relatively early on in the war the song is tamer in its protest stating: “It’s time we stop. Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look, what’s going down,” pleading for people to realize what is happening before the war gets out of hand.

In conclusion, music is a powerful piece of media, able to convey emotion and messages to the masses like no other media. During the Vietnam War, artists took advantage of these properties, not just bringing out music they thought sounded good, but music that was important for the country at the time. This decision quickly snowballed into a nationwide protest to stop the draft. While neither the war nor the draft was stopped, the lessons contained in antiwar music are still around today, leading people to question: how much control should the government have over our lives?

In my opinion, The United States should have never entered the war in Vietnam. The South Vietnamese protested American involvement, and Americans protested American involvement, therefore the U.S. should not have forced its way into the debate to try and stop the spread of communism across the world. The major loss of life could have been prevented if the people in charge had listened to public opinion. While there are currently enough people in the military to prove a future draft unnecessary, I think the opposition to a future draft because of the impact of the antiwar music would be adequate to stop such a coup.

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Leon Westerhof
Music & Culture IRL

Written by Leon Westerhof

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