War - Edwin Starr

   

 WAR - Edwin Starr

As I grew up, I heard Edwin Starr’s hit song “War” several times in movies and on television without truly understanding the significance of its lyrical content. It is seen as one of the most popular anti-war songs of all-time and it’s popular in pop culture through its appearances in several movies and television throughout the years, but from its appearances on Rush Hour and “Boy Meets World,” I saw it as only a fantastic song for karaoke. You can see examples of this in the Rush Hour video below. However, now that I have truly analyzed its lyrics, I understand why he “gave us the greatest antiwar song ever recorded (Burns).” It is an anthem against all war with its iconic lyrics:

“War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing.”

   

Edwin Starr’s rendition of “War” is extremely passionate and it was stated that it “is not only immense talent but true, over-the-top emotion (Burns).” Starr deserves a ton of credit for his version of “War” because with a song like this, emotion is needed to get its message across. Burns also states that “nobody was ever as pissed off about war as Edwin Starr when he sang his masterpiece” and I believe him. You can see one of Starr’s performances and his emotion in the video from 2001 below.

  

  

“War” was “originally written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong as an anti-Vietnam War protest” (Coyle). It was released in 1970 at the high of the Vietnam War and also at the high of its protest. At this time, we were “bombing the hell out of an impoverished Asian country” and we were in the middle of a war that took more American lives than any other war besides both World Wars and the Civil War (Burns). When you look at “War”, you can see that these facts were important to the song’s protest through the lyrics. The lyrics

“Ohhh, war, I despise
Because it means destruction
Of innocent lives”

were used to highlight the innocent Vietnamese people being killed due to our bombings and the other warfare taking place in their poor country. Now on the other side, the lyrics

“War means tears
To thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives”

were used to show that not only are we killing the innocent in our wars but also losing the lives of our own boys and destroying families around our nation. “War” is important because it brings the wrongs of war to light for everyone.

   The beauty of “War” is that it doesn’t die with the end of the Vietnam War because the lyrics are timeless. 

 The song doesn’t specifically say anything about the war in Vietnam but instead just speaks of wars in general. Burns says that “It is a song for our times and all times” because he understands that it can be used as an anthem for the protest against wars of the past, present, and even wars of the future. In fact, Bruce Springsteen covered “War” and performed it in a tour following the 9/11 bombings. This is shown in the video below.

 Works Cited:

Burns, Gary. "Edwin Starr, 1942–2003." Popular Music and Society 26.4 (2003): 527. Print.

Coyle, Rebecca Dawn. "Orchestrating the Waterfront Dispute: Music and Discourse in Bastard Boys." Perfect Beat 10.1 (2009): n. pag. Print.

Rush Hour. Perf. Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. 1998.