History in Songs

Some people learn songs easily, or enjoy analyzing lyrics, and here are some history-related or otherwise evocative-of-history songs.

Read/listen with your critical-thinking cap on; don't take every word to the bank:

Battle of New Orleans

Songfacts.com notes

We Didn't Start the Fire

2022 update:
In 2021, a podcast was started to discuss each person, place or thing mentioned in the song. We Didn't Start the Fire Podcast, available on many platforms, and they're about halfway through their planned 118 or 120 episodes, on the day I'm adding it to this page.

PHOTOS to accompany the song, a very cool presentation by Ye Li at Caltech, with humor and a "pause" function
Flash art doesn't work anymore; in 2022, it's gone.
If this reappears elswhere, someone let me know!

Wikipedia's report with lyrics (in time-line fashion—the blue words are the lyrics), summaries and links

American Pie

Notes at Songfacts.com

Parody by Weird Al:

Abraham, Martin & John

Lyrics

Wikipedia's documentation and commentary

Notes at Songfacts.com

Pinky and the Brain: A Meticulous Analysis of History

Video and annotated lyrics, with links

2026 note: I replaced the Pinky and the Brain song with "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzerald," as spotify no longer had the other. The shipwreck was on November 10, 1975. Lightfoot wrote and recorded his song within a month, but it wasn't released until the next August. No one thought it would be a single, but radio stations were playing it from the album "Summertime Dream" when it was released, and a single was created to make it more accessible to Top 40 stations.