If you served in the U. Whether you went on patrol to Drowning Pool's "Bodies," directed air operations to Outkast's "Bombs over Baghdad" or gave in to a moment of homesickness to John Michael Montgomery's "Letters from Home," everyone who served in the U.
So what battle songs in particular defined service in the U. We asked service members and veterans to share their favorite tracks with us , and they did not disappoint. Here are some of the standouts:. If you know, you know. While it's worth noting that repeated renditions of the song were used as a form of interrogation on detainees at Guantanamo Bay in , the members of the band, well, didn't really care that much about that. James L. Jones told him that the track was "the most amazing battle song I've ever heard in my life" and convinced him to release it as a single.
The rest, as they say, is history. Although the song has nothing to do with the U. The song "captured the essence of the deployment experience in terms of the fears, loneliness, bonds, and hope," wrote one Navy vet. People tend to forget that early deployments in the Global War on Terrorism were not unlike deploying in the s. We still had to wait in line to use the internet, we still used personal DVD players for TV and movies, and the iPod was still in its infancy.
Without streaming, we were all still pretty much listening to the same hit songs, and in , you could not escape Evanescence's debut single, "Bring Me to Life. The song was released when units were deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan and reserve units were mobilized to support combat operations throughout the conflict.
American Forces Network AFN radio and television channels were playing it just as much as any other network. This song played constantly throughout the mobilization phase.
