Essential Songs About Nuclear War You Need to Hear

Want some end-of-the-world classics for your next mixtape? Listen to these songs about nuclear war.

After World War II, anxiety over the atom bomb began to influence the creative arts, particularly music. The first songs on the topic surfaced in the 1950s, hit a peak in early 1960s with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and hit yet another peak in the 1980s before dying out with the fall of Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

In early 2022, nuclear anxiety rose as a result of the war between Russia and Ukraine, and with the release of the film “Oppenheimer” in 2023, the bomb is, once again, on everyone’s mind.

Will music follow suit? Possibly. Until then, check out some essential songs about the end of the world as the result of nuclear war.

30. ‘When They Drop the Atomic Bomb’ by Jackie Doll and his Pickled Peppers

When They Drop the Atomic Bomb 78

DV14 Korean War / YouTube

Year released: 1951

Bottom line: After World War II, the United States and Soviet Union divided Korea at the 38th parallel. The Soviets occupied the North and the U.S. occupied the South. Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, wanted to reunify the country and launched an attack on the South in 1950.

President Harry S. Truman responded by sending troops to South Korea to fight the battle and with the help of General Douglas MacArthur, pushed North Korean forces back across the parallel. However, in October and November of that year, the Chinese army stopped MacArthur from advancing any further, and by 1951, both sides were at a stalemate.

A frustrated MacArthur was done with diplomacy and criticized Truman for this stance. He wanted to use nukes on the communists. The Joint Chiefs of Staff axed MacArthur for insubordination.

Some Americans supported MacArthur’s idea, including Jackie Doll and his band.

Listen to ‘When They Drop the Atomic Bomb’

29. ‘The Sun Is Burning’ by Simon and Garfunkel

Simon and Garfunkel LP cover

Amazon

Year released: 1964

Bottom line: Originally written and recorded by British folk artist Ian Campbell a year earlier, “The Sun Is Burning” figures prominently on Simon and Garfunkel’s debut album and is the most well-known version of the song.

Campbell wrote the “The Sun is Burning” to get fellow folkies onboard with taking a stand against nuclear warfare and felt strongly enough to donate some of the money he made on the tune to Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The song’s lyrics initially describe summer’s day:

The sun is burning in the sky
Strands of clouds go slowly drifting by
In the park the lazy bees
Are joining in the flowers, among the trees
And the sun burns in the sky

But, as they continue, the reality becomes all the more devastating:

Now the sun has come to Earth
Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death
Death comes in a blinding flash
Of hellish heat and leaves a smear of ash
And the sun has come to Earth

Listen to the ‘The Sun Is Burning’

28. ‘The Great Atomic Power’ by the Louvin Brothers

'The Great Atomic Power' 45

VietnamWarSongProject / YouTube

Year released: 1962

Bottom line: Immediately after WWII, the atomic bomb was Biblical fodder for evangelicals, as it heralded (and still does) end times prophecy.

This song by the Louvin Brothers poses the question — when (not if) you die in a nuclear hellfire, will you be ready to meet your maker or will you be headed to the great fire down below?

Are you ready for that great atomic power?
Will you rise and meet your Savior in the end?
Will you shout or will you cry when the fire rains from on high?
Are you ready for that great atomic power?

Listen to ‘The Great Atomic Power’

27. ‘Fujiyama Mama’ by Wanda Jackson

Wanda Jackson in the studio

RoverTCB / YouTube

Year released: 1957

Bottom line: Written by Jack Hammer (aka, Earl Solomon Burroughs) from the perspective of a Japanese woman who is drunk on sake and will soon “blow my top” with energy that equals the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII.

Surprisingly, the song was smash hit in Japan but was a little too sexually charged to chart stateside.

According to Wanda Jackson: “Nobody would play it. They barely had accepted Elvis and the other ones, and they weren’t too sure about accepting a teenage girl singing this kind of music.”

Listen to ‘Fujiyama Mama’

26. ‘Crawl Out Through The Fallout’ by Sheldon Allman

Sheldon Allman album cover

Year released: 1960

Bottom line: Good humor in the face of adversity is what the novelty song “Crawl Out Through the Fallout” hoped to achieve in 1960:

Crawl out through the fallout, baby,
When they drop that bomb,
Crawl out through the fallout with the greatest of aplomb
When your white count’s getting higher
Hurry don’t delay,
I’ll hold you close and kiss those radiation burns away

Sheldon Allman, who also wrote a song called “Radioactive Mama” (with lines like “Well since I kissed you baby, that evening in the park, I lost my hair and eyebrows and my teeth shine in the dark” how could he miss?), was the also singing voice for TV’s talking horse, “Mr. Ed.”

“Fallout” would likely have been lost to history if it weren’t for the video game “Fallout 4,” where it has been introduced to a whole new generation of listeners.

Listen to ‘Crawl Out Through The Fallout’

25. ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’ by Bob Dylan

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Year released: 1963

Bottom line: “Talkin'” was recorded is in the “talking blues” genre, which began in the 1920s and was popularized by Woody Guthrie, who is one of Dylan’s biggest inspirations.

The song details the comic tale of man who dreams he’s the survivor of a nuclear attack. In his dreams, he wanders the streets, looking to make contact with anyone he can find, but they are afraid and run away:

Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell
“Give me a string bean, I’m a hungry man!”
A shotgun fired and away I ran
I don’t blame them too much, though … they didn’t know me

It turns out that the narrator is not the only one having the dream — it’s a universal event. Dylan ends the song with the iconic line, “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,” which Beyoncé quoted online in 2013, when announcing her self-titled album.

Listen to ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’

24. ‘Eve of Destruction’ by Barry McGuire

Eve of Destruction album cover

Year released: 1965

Bottom line: This protest song written by P.F. Sloan references the social issues of the mid-1960s, among them Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and the possibility of nuclear annihilation.

When it was released, many radio stations refused to play the song, claiming it was anti-government. But banning things makes them even more popular, and it quickly went to number 1 in 1965.

Listen to ‘Eve of Destruction’

23. ‘Enola Gay’ by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Enola Gay single

Year released: 1980

Bottom line: This danceable new wave track references the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

The song reflects on if the decision to use atomic power to end the war was necessary and includes the line “It’s 8:15, and that’s the time that it’s always been,” which is the time the bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, and its clocks were frozen.

OMD member Andy McCluskey wrote the song out of his fascination with WWII history and wanted it to convey “an ambivalence about whether it was the right or the wrong thing to do.”

Listen to ‘Enola Gay’

22. ‘This World Over’ by XTC

This World Over 12 Inch

Year released: 1984

Bottom line: XTC member Andy Partridge had a child on the way when he wrote “This World Over,” as his protest to the saber-rattling of superpower leaders in the early 1980s.

He said, “My first child was on the way and [I] just thought that, if I survived, how terrible it would be to have to tell her what life used to be like, that there was once a place called London, and it was a fantastic place but it’s not there anymore.”

Listen to ‘This World Over’

21. ‘Dancing With Tears in My Eyes’ by Ultravox

Year released: 1984

Bottom line: 1984 was a peak year for nuclear fears, and the songs of that year reflected the collective angst.

In “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes,” the narrator is driving home to see his beloved after learning WWIII is imminent. He states:

It’s five and I’m driving home again,
It’s hard to believe that it’s my last time,
The man on the wireless cries again,
It’s over, it’s over.

When he gets home, he and his wife “drink to forget the coming storm.” In the video, there’s a flash of light, and they disappear.

Listen to ‘Dancing With Tears in My Eyes’

20. ‘Seconds’ by U2

War album cover

Year released: 1983

Bottom line: U2 have often let their feelings be known about the state of the world, particularly on their earlier records.

“Seconds” is one of darker tracks on “War.” The Edge takes the lead here on the first two verses, detailing how it “takes a second to say goodbye” as “lightning flashes across the sky.”

Listen to ‘Seconds’

19. ‘Russians’ by Sting

Russians single cover

Year released: 1985

Bottom line: At the height of the Cold War, Sting asked the question, “How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?” “Russians” was a plea to (and critique of) superpowers to not go the nuclear route.

In 2021, director James Cameron said the song was the inspiration for the child character of John Connor in “Terminator 2.” He said, “[I was] writing notes for ‘Terminator,’ and I was struck by Sting’s song, that ‘I hope the Russians love their children too.’ And I thought, ‘You know what? The idea of a nuclear war is just so antithetical to life itself.’ That’s where the kid came from.”

Sting, who thought the song would never be relevant again after the fall of the communism in the early 1990s, rerecorded it in March 2022 to benefit Ukraine. He said, “In the light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful, unthreatening neighbor, the song is, once again, a plea for our common humanity.”

Listen to ‘Russians’

18. ‘World Destruction’ by Time Zone

World Destruction single

Year released: 1984

Bottom line: “World Destruction,” one of the earliest rock/rap records, was a collaboration between rapper Afrika Bambaataa and ex-Sex Pistol/Public Image Ltd. frontman John Lydon (aka, Johnny Rotten).

Its lyrics speak of the end of the world, Biblical prophecy, and nuclear war — and it couldn’t be more topical today.

The music video quotes then-president Ronald Reagan’s leaked joke, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes,” which the USSR was none too happy about at the time.

Listen to ‘World Destruction’

17. ‘Red Skies’ by the Fixx

Red Skies single

Year released: 1982

Bottom line: Fixx frontman Cy Curnin said that this song (and the hit “Stand or Fall”) reflected his hopelessness during the height of the Cold War.

“I was feeling [a] sense of impotence in the early ’80s or late ’70s when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were getting in bed together, metaphorically speaking, and designing a whole defense system that involved Europeans’ lives without asking us — it was never on any electorate ballot that I can remember. That struck a chord.”

Listen to ‘Red Skies’

16. ‘Wooden Ships’ by Crosby, Stills & Nash

Crosby, Stills & Nash

Alex DeLarge / YouTube

Year released: 1969

Bottom line: “Wooden Ships” was written by David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane at the height of the Vietnam War.

Kantner and Still wrote the lyrics from the point of view of nuclear war survivors attempting to escape a nuclear war’s aftermath and create a new civilization.

As the group travels to safety, they eat “purple berries” (“Say, can I have some of your purple berries? Yes, I’ve been eating them for six or seven weeks now, Haven’t got sick once, Prob’ly keep us both alive”), which are iodine pills to stave of radiation sickness.

Those left behind aren’t so lucky: “Horror grips us as we watch you die, All we can do is echo your anguished cries, Stare as all human feelings die, We are leaving, you don’t need us.”

Listen to ‘Wooden Ships’

15. ‘We Will Become Silhouettes’ by the Postal Service

“We Will Become Silhouettes” single

Year released: 2005

Bottom line: One of the few later-era songs about the pending nuclear apocalypse, this song by the Postal Service became its only charting U.S. single (even though the track “Such Great Heights” is more well-known.)

“Silhouettes” was written by singer/songwriter Ben Gibbard (also the leader of Death Cab for Cutie) and reflected the fears of a post-9/11 world.

We “become silhouettes” when the bomb explodes and our bodies disintegrate. All that is left is a shadow of who we were.

Listen to ‘We Will Become Silhouettes’

14. ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’ by Morrissey

Everyday Is Like Sunday single

Year released: 1988

Bottom line: Moz took lyrical inspiration from the 1957 movie “On the Beach,” which follows a group of survivors who make it to Australia, which has yet to be affected by nuclear fallout.

“Everyday Is Like Sunday” takes place in an English beach town, which is so dull, Morrissey wishes for armageddon to take him and the town out for good.

Listen to ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’

13. ‘Breathing’ by Kate Bush

Breathing sheet music

Year released: 1980

Bottom line: “Breathing” is written from the point of view of a fetus, who knows that nuclear war has taken place, and he is being born just to die. It also refers to a mother smoking while pregnant.

Bush said of the song, “Breathing’ is about human beings killing themselves. I think that people smoking is one of those tiny things that says a lot about human beings. I mean, I smoke and enjoy it, but we smoke and we know it’s dangerous. Maybe there’s some kind of strange subconscious desire to damage ourselves. It would seem so if you looked back through history, wouldn’t it?”

Listen to ‘Breathing’

12. ‘The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades’ by Timbuk 3

The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades single

Year released: 1985

Bottom line: To Timbuk 3, the future wasn’t bright because they were being optimistic about it. The future was bright because a nuclear bomb had exploded, hence the need for shades. (Hopefully, they were made of lead.)

Despite this dark message, the song became a hit under the pretense of being hopeful.

Listen to ‘The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades’

11. ‘Two Tribes’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Two Tribes single

Year released: 1984

Bottom line: This anti-war song by Frankie Goes to Hollywood was inspired by then-president Ronald Reagan’s belief that the second coming of Christ would occur after a nuclear war. The “two tribes” in question are the United States and the USSR.

The video features actors playing Reagan and then-leader of the Soviet Union, Konstantin Chernenko, duking it out in the wrestling ring.

Some versions of the song include the voice of British actor Patrick Allen who narrated the “Protect and Survive” series for the BBC.

In 2022, the song was featured in “South Park” with a shirtless Putin dancing to it in his office.

Listen to ‘Two Tribes’

10. ‘Party at Ground Zero’ by Fishbone

Party at Ground Zero single

Year released: 1983

Bottom line: When the bomb drops, you might as well go out dancing, according to Los Angeles band Fishbone, who released this ska classic.

The video, helmed by “Nightmare Before Christmas” director Henry Selick, pays homage to Edgar Allen Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.” In this version, Death removes his mask and detonates a nuclear bomb.

Listen to ‘Party at Ground Zero’

9. ‘Games Without Frontiers’ by Peter Gabriel

Games Without Frontiers cover

Year released: 1980

Bottom line: A staple of many classic rock stations today, Peter Gabriel’s lyrics serve as social commentary on world governments making life-or-death decisions by likening them to schoolyard games.

A side note — the words that sound like “She’s so popular,” are actually, “Jeux Sans Frontières,” French for “Games Without Frontiers.” It is also the title of a European game show in which people from differing towns would compete against each other in strange costumes.

Listen to ‘Games Without Frontiers’

8. ‘Kill the Poor’ by Dead Kennedys

Kill the Poor Cover

Year released: 1979

Bottom line: Written as satire, the song imagines a nuclear blast that wipes out only the poor. This creates a perfect world for the elite, by eliminating all the “unsightliness” the impoverished bring to the table.

Frontman Jello Biafra later said of the song: “We could have another song about how bad nuclear war is, but can we say it in a different way? What about from the Pentagon’s view? Even the [Jimmy] Carter admission is talking about this Neutron Bomb that kills people but doesn’t harm valuable property. … Aha! ‘Kill the Poor’ was born!'”

Listen to ‘Kill the Poor’

7. ‘New Frontier’ by Donald Fagan

New Frontier single

Year released: 1982

Bottom line: Just because we live in the shadow of nuclear proliferation doesn’t mean romance isn’t on the table.

Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen wrote this song from the point of view of a teen in 1962 who’s family has a backyard bomb shelter. When he meets a girl at a party, he invites her back to the shelter for a little private time.

The song title references the “New Frontier,” a term used by John F. Kennedy regarding his presidential agenda.

Listen to ‘New Frontier’

6. ‘Forever Young’ by Alphaville

Year released: 1984

Bottom line: This Alphaville track seems to celebrate youth, but “Forever Young” is a term to describe someone who dies young, and the song reflects the fear of death.

As it, too, was written during the peak of the Cold War, the singer states the sentiment of the time: “Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst; are you gonna drop the bomb or not?”

Listen to ‘Forever Young’

5. ‘Four Minute Warning’ by Radiohead

Four Minute Warning single art

Year released: 2009

Bottom line: This Radiohead classic is based around the British government’s public alert system, active from the years 1953 to 1992. A four-minute warning is said to be the time it would take a detonated nuclear bomb to reach its target.

Every time the chorus repeats, the four-minute warning loses one minute.

Listen to ‘Four Minute Warning’

4. ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ by Tears for Fears

Tears for Fears greatest hits collection

Year released: 1985

Bottom line: Still heard every day, this upbeat ’80s classic isn’t so upbeat after all.

Its lyrics detail the lust the superpowers had for world dominance, which was spelled out with the imminent threat of nuclear war.

In an earlier version of the song, the chorus ended with: “Everybody wants to go to war,” but the band decided to go in a less uncomfortable direction.

Listen to ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’

3. ‘I Melt With You’ by Modern English

Year released: 1982

Bottom line: This classic, made popular by the movie “Valley Girl” (and featured in Burger King, Ritz crackers, M&M’s and Taco Bell ads since) was less upbeat than listeners realized at the time.

While it is romantic, according to Modern English singer Robbie Grey, “It really does take place with the world about to end, and the melting is quite literal. I don’t think many people realized it was about a couple making love as the bomb dropped. As they made love, they become one and melt together.”

Listen to ‘I Melt With You’

2. ’99 Luftballons’ (99 Red Balloons) by Nena

99 Luftballoon cover art

Year released: 1983

Bottom line: It’s a simple concept — Nena and an unidentified person buy 99 red balloons, blow them up and let them go. They show up on radar as UFOs, and the superpowers ready themselves for nuclear attack.

Nena’s guitarist, Carlo Karges, wrote the lyrics after attending a Rolling Stones show in West Berlin. He got the idea while watching a balloon drift over the other side of the Berlin Wall and imagined Communist forces mistaking it for something more sinister.

Listen to ’99 Luftballons’ (99 Red Balloons)

1. ‘1999’ by Prince

1999 album cover

Year released: 1982

Bottom line: The Purple One addressed his (and the world’s) fears of nuclear armageddon in this danceable track from the album of the same name. As the song states, all you can do is make the best of it before the inevitable.

When interviewed in 1999, Prince said of the track: “We were sitting around watching a special about 1999, and a lot of people were talking about the year and speculating on what was going to happen. And I just found it real ironic how everyone that was around me whom I thought to be very optimistic people were dreading those days, and I always knew I’d be cool. So, I just wanted to write something that gave hope, and what I find is people listen to it. And no matter where we are in the world, I always get the same type of response from them.”

Listen to ‘1999’

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