There is no shortage of war songs in our time. Since the Vietnam War, artists have written about war in one way or another and we have gotten some great songs and some supremely crappy ones. For me, a key element of a war song is how timeless it is. That is to say how it can be applied to any war not just the current one. Its pretty obvious that Brothers is about kids going off to fight in the Iraq War but it never states it. Instead this song starts by building vague characters: kids on a beach in what I assume is the north east US. They are spending a night at the beach until a storm comes and they have to leave.

The next part of the song delves right into the war theme. It talks about the role parents play in preparing kids to go into the military and how they get scared when a war actually happens. In the best lyrics of the song, Jesse Lacey sings about how there will never be enough troops until ‘half our names our etched out in the wall and the other half ruined from the things we saw’. This lyric isn’t subtle but it doesn’t shove the horrors of war into your face either. It just tells us that even those who make it back aren’t the same and never will be.

The last important thing to note about this song is the clearly anti-war chorus. Jesse never wants his brother to go to war and in one powerful line he reminds us of that. This is another reason why I believe this song is timeless; because there will always be brothers and sisters going to war and there will always be family left behind that are scared that they will never see them again.