Billy, Don't Be A Hero



I don't think a song like "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" would be popular now.



There is much speculation and debate over music and how it affects children. When children commit crimes, act out, or engage in self-destructive activities, critics are quick to blame the influence of explicit music and lyrics. I don't think we can ascribe blame to music that easily. Just as a reader brings his own world experience to anything he reads, I think the same is true of a listener bringing his/her own experience to the music he hears. We hear and interpret things in our own way.

But I will say that music has an affect on a child's perspective, and that it may influence a child in ways that may not be intended. What people tend to forget is that a child is listening to a song with immature ears. He may not hear it in the same way that an adult would. It may have different meanings for him because the material conveyed is adult material; out of his scope of knowledge. He may easily misinterpret what the music is saying, though his interpretation is equally valid because he is hearing it through his own perception of the world.

My example is a rather innocent song in comparison to what's on the radio today. When I was a child, I remember riding to school on the schoolbus and hearing a song that haunted me in ways that I'm sure an adult would have never realized. I'm talking about the song "Billy, Don't Be A Hero." I heard that song and it scared me.

Billy, don't be a hero,
don't be a fool with your life.
Billy, don't be a hero,
come back and make me your wife.
And as he started to go, she said,
Billy, keep your head low.
Billy, don't be a hero, come back to me.

(Later in the song)

I heard his fiancee got a letter
That told how Billy died that day.
The letter said that he was a hero
She should be proud he died that way.
I heard she threw that letter away.

I was a 7-year-old girl hearing that song. What I heard was that a woman could have so much power over a man that if he didn't do what she told him to do, then if he died, it was his fault for not listening to her. She actually blamed him for his own death. I couldn't believe she was so cruel that she threw his letter away because he didn't do what she'd said. That's what the song was about to me. And I couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand how someone could tell someone else what to do, claiming to love him, and then wouldn't care if he died. That was my naive, childish interpretation of the song. And that impression lasted for decades.

I recently downloaded the song onto my iPod and listened to it again. At first, I thought that I must be listening to the wrong song. This was a jaunty, upbeat tune with something like fife and drums, which I'd never heard as a child. But the words were the same. Now I could put the song into the perspective of the times and realize it for the anti-war sentiment it was. I'd thought it was all about control issues.

So, what are children really hearing when they listen to music today? We can easily criticize musical lyrics for being too explicit and too adult for our children. I will agree with that. But I'm not sure that the actual songs are even what they're hearing. They are hearing songs through an immature, inexperienced filter and it may not sound the same to them as it does to us at all.