17 Songs About the Vietnam War

Although U.S. combat forces withdrew in 1973, the Vietnam War didn’t officially end until April 30, 1975, when South Vietnam surrendered to communist North Vietnam. By that time, tens of thousands of American servicemen had died in the fighting, and America itself had been ripped apart by bitter disagreements about the conflict.

These debates defined the Baby Boomer generation and colored much of the music that remains its legacy. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war’s conclusion, here are 17 enduring songs about Vietnam. The list includes protest anthems, reactionary evocations of patriotism, and nuanced character studies written years later about the regular people whose lives were upended by the bloodshed. 

1. Jimmy Cliff // “Vietnam”
2. The Clash // “Straight to Hell”
3. Merle Haggard // “Okie From Muskogee”
4. Jedi Mind Tricks // “Uncommon Valor”
5. Creedence Clearwater Revival // “Fortunate Son”
6. Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler // “The Ballad of the Green Berets”
7. Marvin Gaye // “What’s Going On”
8. Minutemen // “Viet Nam”
9. Bruce Springsteen // “Born In the USA”
10. Paul Hardcastle // “19”
11. Country Joe and the Fish // “The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag”
12. Billy Joel // “Goodnight Saigon”
13. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas // “I Should Be Proud”
14. Joan Baez // “Saigon Bride”
15. Joni Mitchell // “The Fiddle and the Drum”
16. Edwin Starr // “War”
17. Ramones // “53rd & 3rd”

Jimmy Cliff // “Vietnam”

According to legend, Bob Dylan considers this deceptively upbeat 1969 reggae classic the greatest protest song ever written. Jamaican superstar Jimmy Cliff’s heartbreaking lyrics center on two pieces of correspondence: a letter from a soldier telling his buddy he’ll be home soon, and a telegram from the U.S. government informing that same soldier’s mother that her boy has been killed in action. Cliff was inspired by a real-life friend who served in Vietnam and came back a dramatically changed man. 

The Clash // “Straight to Hell”

This standout from The Clash’s 1982 album Combat Rock spotlights downtrodden people—immigrants, in particular—in various corners of the globe. In the second verse, Clash frontman Joe Strummer considers the plight of the “Amerasian,” children born to U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese women during the war. Strummer sings the devastating chorus from the perspective of a G.I. who wants nothing to do with his son: “Go straight to hell, boy.” The British rapper M.I.A. later sampled “Straight to Hell” for her 2008 smash “Paper Planes,” also about immigration. 

Merle Haggard // “Okie From Muskogee”

While it’s not exactly a pro-war song, Merle Haggard’s 1969 counter-counterculture country anthem “Okie From Muskogee” is a rebuke of the longhaired, sandal-clad hippies who were smoking weed and burning their draft cards on college campuses across America. Haggard’s parents were from Oklahoma, and the singer-songwriter wanted to give voice to Middle American perspectives on patriotism and common decency.

In later years, however, Haggard came to have a different view of the war—and of the song, which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and No. 41 on the Hot 100.

“If you use that song now, it’s a really good snapshot of how dumb we were in the past,” he told American Songwriter in 2018. “They had me fooled, too. I’ve become educated … I’ve learned the truth since I wrote that song. I play it now with a different projection. It’s a different song now. I’m different now. I still believed in America then. I don’t know that I do [believe] now.”

Jedi Mind Tricks // “Uncommon Valor”

This affecting 2006 track by the hip-hop duo Jedi Mind Tricks features a guest verse from R.A. the Rugged Man, who raps from the perspective of his father, John A. Thorburn, a staff sergeant in Vietnam who was shot down behind enemy lines. Thorburn survived the war, but due to his exposure to the chemical Agent Orange, two of his children were born severely disabled, and both died young.

Creedence Clearwater Revival // “Fortunate Son”

This incendiary 1969 hit isn’t about whether the Vietnam War is morally right or wrong; it’s about the everyday working people forced to fight it. “You’d hear about the son of this senator or that congressman who was given a deferment from the military or a choice position in the military,” CCR leader John Fogerty wrote in his 2015 memoir, also titled Fortunate Son. “They seemed privileged and whether they liked it or not, these people were symbolic in the sense that they weren’t being touched by what their parents were doing. They weren’t being affected like the rest of us.” 

Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler // “The Ballad of the Green Berets”

At no point in his chart-topping 1966 song “The Ballad of the Green Berets” does Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler mention Vietnam by name. But the elite Green Berets were among the first U.S. servicemen deployed to the embattled Southeast Asian nation, and it’s obvious that Sadler is glorifying them and their mission. Sadler had himself been a Green Beret medic, and he composed part of the song while recuperating from a leg injury he sustained in Vietnam. Perhaps exemplifying public opinion at the time, “Green Berets” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks. 

Marvin Gaye // “What’s Going On”

Motown boss Barry Gordy was famously reluctant to release this 1971 protest anthem, which marked a huge departure for Marvin Gaye, then known for sweet love songs. Gaye was moved to co-write “What’s Going On” after receiving letters from his brother, Frankie, who served in Vietnam. “What’s Going On” spawned a state-of-the-world concept album of the same name, and in 2020, Rolling Stone declared it the greatest album of all time.

“I realized that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people,” Gaye once told Rolling Stone. “I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world.”

Minutemen // “Viet Nam”

Few punk bands in the ’80s sounded like Minutemen, the SoCal trio behind ferocious funk flexes like “Viet Nam,” one of 45 short and punchy tracks found on the landmark 1984 album Double Nickels on the Dime. “Viet Nam” runs a mere 1:29, but that’s all frontman D. Boon needs to criticize U.S. policy in Vietnam, accuse the government of misleading its citizens, and hit listeners with two ghastly figures: 50,000, the approximate number of Americans killed in the war, and 500,000, one estimate of the number of Vietnamese who lost their lives. 

Bruce Springsteen // “Born In the USA”

Bruce penned the title track from his blockbuster 1984 album Born In the USA after reading Vietnam veteran Roy Kovic’s 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July, later adapted into an Oscar-winning film by Oliver Stone. While some mistake this bombastic hit for a jingoistic anthem, Bruce writes from the POV of an unemployed vet feeling lost and angry 10 years after returning home. It’s anything but a rosy portrait of America.

Paul Hardcastle // “19”

Vietnam wasn’t like other wars. That’s the point British musician Paul Hardcastle drives home in hyper-memorable fashion with his 1985 electro-pop curio “19.” The voice heard throughout the song belongs to TV announcer Peter Thomas, and it’s pulled from the 1982 ABC News special Vietnam Requiem. Over Hardcastle’s bumping beat, Thomas tells us that the average soldier in Vietnam was just 19 years old, and that half of veterans suffer from PTSD. It’s hardly the stuff pop dreams are made of, and yet “19” reached No. 1 in several countries.

Country Joe and the Fish // “The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag”

Navy veteran Country Joe McDonald penned this satirical antiwar ditty in just 30 minutes in 1965. With its lyrics about hawkish politicians and greedy businessmen looking to get rich off the conflict, the song became a highlight of Country Joe’s performance at Woodstock in 1969.

“The important thing about the ‘Fixin’-to-Die Rag’ was that it had a new point of view that did not blame soldiers for war,” Country Joe told Street Spirit in 2016. “It just blamed the politicians and it blamed the manufacturers of weapons.” 

Billy Joel // “Goodnight Saigon”

On his 1982 epic “Goodnight Saigon,” which opens with the sound of whirring chopper blades, Billy Joel isn’t interested in relitigating whether America should have been in Vietnam. His song is concerned solely with the experiences of the soldiers—good men who found brotherhood under the ugliest of circumstances.

“I wanted to do that for my friends who did go to ’Nam,” Joel told Howard Stern. “A lot of them came back from being in country and really had a hard time getting over it, and still to this day I think a lot of them are having a hard time. They were never really welcomed back, and whether you agreed with the war or not, these guys really took it on the chin.”

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas // “I Should Be Proud”

Considered the first antiwar single released on Motown, 1970’s “I Should Be Proud” is about a widow who refuses to believe her husband died protecting America’s freedom, like everyone keeps telling her. “But he wasn’t fighting for me, my Johnny didn’t have to die for me,” Martha Reeves sings. “He’s a victim of the evils of society.” Reeves later claimed she was followed by the CIA, and that the intelligence agency got the song pulled from the radio.

Joan Baez // “Saigon Bride”

Joan Baez was one of the great protest singers of the ’60s, and her 1967 album Joan concludes with the haunting ballad “Saigon Bride,” adapted from a poem by Nina Dusheck. The line “How many children must we kill / Before we make the waves stand still?” echoes the rhetorical questions posed in Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In the Wind.”

Joni Mitchell // “The Fiddle and the Drum”

Joni Mitchell performs this stark 1969 ballad with no musical accompaniment. It’s just her voice and her perspective, which is that of a Canadian who loves America but feels deeply betrayed by its actions overseas. “And so once again, oh, America my friend,” she sings. “And so once again you are fighting us all.” The message still resonated 35 years later, when the alt-metal band A Perfect Circle covered the song to protest the Iraq War.

Edwin Starr // “War”

There are subtle antiwar songs that paint intricate pictures of the conflicts in question, and then there’s Edwin Starr’s 1970 chart-topper “War,” about as blatant and furious (and funky) a statement against violence as there’s ever been. Penned by Motown songwriters Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, “War” was originally recorded by The Temptations and released on their 1970 album Psychedelic Shack. Motown was reluctant to issue the song as a single, as it was risky for one of the label’s top acts to take a hard political stance, so they gave it to Edwin Starr. His heavy-hitting rendition earned a permanent place in pop culture, inspiring covers by Bruce Springsteen, The Jam, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, among others.

Ramones // “53rd & 3rd”

Few bands represent late-’70s New York City like Ramones, and “53rd & 3rd,” off their game-changing 1976 self-titled debut, captures all the grimy danger of that era. It centers on a former Green Beret who, following his return home from Vietnam, resorts to selling his body on the titular Manhattan street corner, likely in order to buy drugs. In the song’s bridge, bassist Dee Dee Ramone (who wrote the song) describes killing a john to prove he’s not actually gay. “53rd & 3rd” may have been semi-autobiographical, though Dee Dee never served in the military.

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