"This Is War": A Music Review

While it's hard to complain about the message of the song, seeing as I myself am quite fervently a national pacifist, most good works of art and literature and music that deal with the topic at least have something new or original to offer.  "One More Parade" is an awesome song on the topic, first of all because it's performed by the far more talented Phil Ochs and secondly because it specifically addresses the idea of the pride and glory of war.  Instead of just showing footage of corpses, so to speak, it's taking its time to debunk some of the positive imagery and ideas associated with the topic.  "This is War" is just saying "Duh-hur, war is bad!  People are gonna die!"

The music and production isn't bad, though it seems generic.  I'm pretty sure if you put any other vocals over it, it's work just as well.  Still, the musicianship is solid and it's hard to pick at it too much.

The singing... is less forgivable.  Jared Leto seems to be doing his best Eliza Doolittle impression during the chorus.
"To the rauh!  To the laeeh!  We will fah!  To the daeah!"
Consonants, Jared!  Not to mention it's in that terrible strained voice singers always use when they want to sound deep.  It sounds like he's half garbage disposal.  You know, while passion is an integral part of singing, it's possible to be poignant while maintaining your composure, another reason I maintain "One More Parade" is superior.  If your lyrics aren't strong enough, so you have to sing like you just got hit in the solar plexus, then you need to rewrite your lyrics.

And boy oh boy, are these lyrics weak.  Just listen to the chorus.  A song-writing computer algorithm could come up with those with a pretty simple code.  The rhyme scheme's pretty good (rhyming "pariah" with "messiah" was, I admit, pretty clever), but most of the song is just store-brand stock phrases I've heard a million times before.

I certainly hope singing "brave new world" was not a reference to the novel Brave New World, because that would be the equivalent of Taylor Swift's Romeo and Juliet references, in that it only serves to prove you've never actually read Brave New World.  Brave New World in fact has very little to do with war, and there are many other dystopian works which deal with it in a way that actually counts.  Off the top of my head I can't think of a single dystopia with less satirical point directed at violence.  Brazil, maybe.  You started off the video with an H.G. Wells quote, maybe you could have used When The Sleeper Wakes.

Oh yes, the video.  Probably the worst part of the whole message.  François Truffaut once said "There is no such thing as an anti-war movie" because it will look exciting up on screen.  The more striking anti-war books and movies can avoid this via very careful control of what they show and don't show, such as Johnny Got His Gun which spends the vast majority of the book dealing with the aftermath of the war, a large portion on the mentality to lead to it, and only the tiniest passing slivers on the war itself.  For "This is War", the video director apparently decided to make war seem as awesome and glamorous as possible.  At several points I was convinced I was watching a trailer for the next Transformers movie.  We get attractive young men in military gear firing awesome weapons and humvees driving around in explosions.  Gol-ly, war sure is grisly, ain't it?


Oh, a jab at George W. Bush.  Timely.  Richard Nixon, too?  I bet he's rolling over in his grave.  Because he's dead.  He has been for a while.  You're criticizing the political actions of someone who died before half of the target audience of this song was born.


What are they even shooting at?  I don't see anything dangerous, unless you're trying to fly an airplane through the debris, in which case a bunch of guys on the ground firing machine guns in the air probably wouldn't be helping.

Look, he's got a single tear running down his cheek.  They went there.

Oh yeah, and no one dies.  Way to show us the devastating effects of combat, where everyone lives happily ever after.

Heck, I'm not even sure this is an anti-war song anymore.  Maybe the whole thing is all about how awesome war is, and frankly if you listen to just the lyrics there's not a lot to disprove that.  Maybe the H.G. Wells quote at the beginning is the sarcastic part, and everything else is an entirely sincere praise of the glory of war.

I'm not really sure what was up with all those triangles, though.

In short, if you're gonna try and deliver a message, make sure you don't use satire so sloppily you 

completely undermine your message.  The music itself isn't terrible, but it is pretty bad, and the video is just stupidly composed.


War is bad.  There.  That sentence delivered the message better than this song could ever hope to.  Odds are no one who doesn't already whole-heartedly agree with the intended message will ever be swayed by it, even a little.  I can' think of anything else to say about it, since it would probably just make you pay more attention to it and get more and more devoted the idea that war is awesome.