If you've used Google today (or you're just on top of your historical dates), you know that November 9 marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Check out our list of huge concerts that were staged at the iconic structure and also consider these other five great tracks about walls. We're not talking about "99 Bottles of Beer on The Wall" here, we mean songs that approach walls in the same spirit as the German protestors who tore down the barrie holding them back from their neighbors.
"Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho"
This track is a well-known spiritual, believed to have been drafted by slaves in the United States during the 19th Century. Many an African-American spiritual is based on the stories held within the Bible and it's easy to understand why: Much of the both the Old and New Testaments deals with the slavery/oppression of the Jewish people, so slaves in the field could easily sympathize and pray for their own miraculous emancipation. The tale of The Battle of Jericho involves Joshua eliciting God's help so that he could destroy the walls of the city by marching his forces around them while his war horns blared. The walls represent more than an enemy barricade for the original signers however. They aimed to overcome both the literal and metaphorical walls holding them from freedom. (Forgive this very not traditional rendition below)
The Wall by Pink Floyd (1979)
The Wall was not written by Roger Waters strictly about the Berlin Wall, as some have claimed. Still, the issues faced by Pink (a composite character representing plenty of former frontman Syd Barrett and a little bit of Waters himself) builds a metaphorical wall to shield himself from humanity and the pressures of society. Despite the bassist's legendary show celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall following its fall, the album itself tells the story of building a wall, and the Pink Floyd tour around the record featured a 40-foot structure being built between the band and the audience throughout the show. The themes of isolation remain appropriate however.
"Writing on The Wall" by Hazel O'Connor (1980)
Hazel O'Connor didn't have the Berlin Wall in mind when she wrote her second single "Writing on The Wall" but the message certainly seems like a call to action nearly a decade in advance. The vocalist downplays the idea that life needs to be "a compromise," calling out to her protagonist: "Reaching out for you it calls/Have you seen the writing on the wall?/Did you look for your cause?/Writing on the wall?" There was plenty of writing on the West side of the Berlin Wall, at least in terms of graffiti, but both Easterners and Westerners could pick up on the figurative message: Neither enjoyed being separated from their brethren on the other side and eventually they responded to the writing during 1989.
"The Wall Song" by David Crosby and Graham Nash (1986)
Crosby, Stills and Nash had been reduced to just Crosby and Nash by 1986 but the duo still managed to turn out a quality product. Crosby gets the credit for this track, which laments "always walking...the wall stretches endless beside you to nowhere/This is the wall you've been trying to cross for years/this fence made of tears no one hears." It's probably more about overcoming personal obstacles but the song sums up the feelings of East Germans to be sure: They had been trying to flee to the West for 25 years and being killed in the process. Crosby, Stills and Nash had written a song about the Berlin Wall however, titled "Chipping Away."
"Back To The Wall" by Steve Earle (1988)
This track off of Earle's 1988 album Copperhead Road has nothing to do with international politics but instead on a subject matter much closer to his heart: homelessness (as he always sympathized with the lowdown and the blue collar man in his music). The advice given to the jobless protagonist during this track is that "you've got no place to fall when your back's to the wall." The implication is that you shouldn't bother trying to get ahead in life because it'll only set yourself up for failure, a message that Earle was presumably delivering in a satirical fashion. That hidden message of striving for bigger things could have easily been taken to heart by Berliners: Don't settle for your city being split down the middle.
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