My Top Ten World War I Songs

100 years ago today.

Here's ten songs in tribute to all those soldiers - on all sides - who lost their lives in what tragically wasn't "The War To End All Wars".

With a special mention to Franz Ferdinand, who started it all...



10. Whistling Jack Smith - I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman

Rumoured to be based on a WWI marching song, the hit version was written by the two Rogers: British songwriters Cook & Greenaway. There was no Whistling Jack Smith, and some debate over who actually did the whistling. On the album version, someone shouts "Oi!" near the end, but this was "cleaned up" for the single release and changed to "Hey!" instead.

Those crazy 60s also brought us The Royal Guardsman - Snoopy Vs. The Red  about Baron von Richthofen, Germany's infamous Red Baron airman. Charlie Brown's cartoon pooch Snoopy often imagined himself fighting The Red Baron in the war.

9. Metallica - One

One of the more accessible Metallica songs, about a WWI soldier whose injuries are so terrible he's left praying for death.

8. The Zombies - Butchers Tale (Western Front 1914) 

Definitely the scariest song on this list... perhaps because (unlike Metallica's usual fare) it's a million miles away from the sunshiny pop of She's Not There.

And I have seen a friend of mine

Hang on the wire

Like some rag toy

Then in the heat the flies come down

And cover up the boy

And the flies come down in

Gommecourt, Thiepval,

Mametz Wood, and French Verdun

If the preacher he could see those flies

Wouldn't preach for the sound of guns

7. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Poppy Day

...In Flanders fields

The poppies grow

Between the crosses

Row on row

That mark out place

We are the dead...

Based on a 1919 poem by war poet John McCrae. See also 10,000 Maniacs take on Wilfred Owen... Anthem For Doomed Youth.

6. The Beautiful South - Poppy

Leave to Paul Heaton to mourn with bitterness and anger...

They dressed you up and took you off to World War One 

Armed you and surrounded you with wire 

Sat in stinking mud you sung your stupid songs 

And waited till they told you when to fire

Cause the rulers always laugh 

At a video bloodbath 

Nothing makes them laugh 

Like a video bloodbath

From the First World War to the Yom-Kippur 

It was Beadle's About 

The bayonets slice, the rockets roar 

And he jumps out

5. The Pogues - The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Written by Scots-Aussie Eric Bogle (whose other big WWI tune was The Green Fields of France), but Shane and the boys did the definitive version for me...

When I was a young man I carried my pack

And I lived the free life of a rover

From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback

I waltzed my Matilda all over

Then in nineteen fifteen my country said, "Son

It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done"

So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun

And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda

As we sailed away from the quay

And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers

We sailed off to Gallipoli

4. Radiohead - Harry Patch (In Memory Of)

Written in tribute to "the last surviving Tommy", the oldest survivor of WWI who died at the age of 111 in 2009...

I am the only one that got through

The others died wherever they fell

It was an ambush

They came up from all sides

Give your leaders each a gun and then let them

Fight it out themselves

3. PJ Harvey - On Battleship Hill

Polly Jean mourns the 500,000 who died at Gallipoli...

On Battleship Hill I hear the wind,

Say "Cruel nature has won again."

2. Randy Newman - Going Home

Here's Randy's explanation of this song...

This is a World War I song.
World War I fascinates me because it was such a shock to the world.
Nothing before or since has come close.
It was a horrible, horrible event.
It was modern weaponry and cavalry and then tanks.
They fought for four years over a hundred yards, some ridiculously small amount of ground.
It's the stupidest event in history.
This is one of those songs that I just can't sing - it's right in one of the cracks in my range.
So we did it to approximate what a recording of that era would sound like.
I know Mitchell's going to get blamed in some review for using all these effects, but we did it because I simply can't sing the thing.

1. The Farm - Altogether Now

I was nineteen when this record came out and I had no idea what it was about. I guess I just didn't listen to the lyrics...

Remember boy that your forefather's died

Lost in millions for a country's pride

But they never mention the trenches of Belgium

When they stopped fighting and they were one

A spirit stronger than war was at work that night

December 1914 cold, clear and bright

Countries' borders were right out of sight

When they joined together and decided not to fight

All together now

All together now

All together now, in no man's land

The same old story again

All those tears shed in vain

Nothing learned and nothing gained

Only hope remains

All together now

All together now

All together now

In no man's land

The boys had their say they said no

Stop the slaughter let's go home, let's go, let's go

(See also Pipes of Peace by Sir Macca Thumbs Aloft... which I like more than I ought to... but then, I was only 11 when it came out.)