bring them home
Bruce Springsteen Lyrics


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If you love this land of the free
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring them back from overseas
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

It will make the politicians sad, I know
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
They wanna tangle with their foe
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

They wanna test their grand theories
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
With the blood of you and me
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

We'll give no more brave young lives
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
For the gleam in someone's eyes
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

The men will cheer and the boys will shout
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
And we will all turn out
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

The church bells will ring with joy
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
To welcome our darling girls and boys
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

We will lift their voice in song
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
When Johnny comes marching home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring them back from the overseas
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
If you love this land of free
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home




Bring them back from the overseas
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Overall Meaning

In "Bring 'Em Home," Bruce Springsteen laments the waste of human life in war and he calls on Americans to demand that their leaders end the war and bring the countrymen home from overseas. The song is a persuasive call to action, urging listeners to "bring 'em home" and put an end to the pointless deaths of young men fighting a war that many people want to see come to an end. Throughout the song, Springsteen underscores the idea that the young soldiers who are fighting and dying in the war are not abstract soldiers, but real people who are beloved daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, and mothers and fathers.


He asserts that when the war finally ends and the soldiers come home, the joy will be palpable. The men will cheer, the boys will shout, and the church bells will ring with joy. The song reminds listeners that when people love their country, they should work to bring their fellow citizens home from war rather than justify sending them into battle at great personal cost.


Overall, Bruce Springsteen's "Bring 'Em Home" seeks to bring attention to the painful realities of war and underscore the need for ending the war and bringing soldiers home to their loved ones.


Line by Line Meaning

If you love this land of the free
If you truly love this country and everything it stands for


Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Bring our soldiers back home where they belong


Bring them back from overseas
Bring our troops back from their current location outside of the country


It will make the politicians sad, I know
Politicians may not like the idea of bringing soldiers back home


They wanna tangle with their foe
Politicians may want to continue fighting with the enemy


They wanna test their grand theories
Politicians may want to test their theories about war and foreign policy


With the blood of you and me
Their theories are being tested with the blood of innocent soldiers and civilians


We'll give no more brave young lives
We cannot sacrifice any more brave young lives for this cause


For the gleam in someone's eyes
We cannot risk the lives of our soldiers for the fleeting prospect of success


The men will cheer and the boys will shout
When soldiers return home, men and young boys will celebrate their safe return


And we will all turn out
The community will come together to welcome our soldiers back home


The church bells will ring with joy
Churches will ring their bells to celebrate the safe return of our troops


To welcome our darling girls and boys
We will welcome our soldiers, both men and women, back home with open arms


We will lift their voice in song
We will sing songs of joy and happiness for their safe return


When Johnny comes marching home
We will celebrate when our soldiers return home safely


Bring them back from the overseas
Reiterating that our goal is to bring our soldiers back home


Bring them back from the overseas
Reiterating that our goal is to bring our soldiers back home


If you love this land of free
Again, emphasizing that the desire to bring our soldiers back home is rooted in love for our country


Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Repeating the chorus to further drive home the message of the song


Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
Repeating the chorus to further drive home the message of the song




Lyrics © CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Written by: PETER SEEGER

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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Most interesting comments from YouTube:

John Hocking

There have been many moments when I have been enormously proud of the political/anti-war stands Bruce Springsteen has taken. He did so at the cost of the losing many fans.

I had attended at least two concerts on every tour beginning with Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978. He didn't play many Seeger Sessions shows and apparently none within driving distance of Athens, GA, where I lived (and live). It looked for a while that I was going to miss the Seeger Sessions tour entirely. However, I'm originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically, Concord, in the East Bay, which was the location of this concert, and was able to arrange to fly out.

Bruce had opposed the war in Iraq since late 2002, well before the invasion and occupation in March 2003. I don't know if I've ever been prouder than when sitting in about Row 10 as he sang this variation on the Pete Seeger classic written about the Vietnam War.

The video of this great performance disappeared from YouTube shortly after appearing. I'm delighted to see it again, ten years later. (This concert was on June 6, 2006, 10 years ago, tomorrow). Many thanks for uploading. I hope it stays forever.

Thank you, Bruce, and thank you, especially, President Obama, for bringing (almost all of them) home.



John Hocking

I perhaps have an explanation for your confusion. You label President Obama and Hillary Clinton, "the worst warmongers." Worse than whom? Surely not his predecessor.

I can only assume you are ignorant of the fact that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and a neo-con cabal, using false claims that Saddam Hussain had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and (implying) he was behind the 9/11 atrocities (80% of Republican voters who reelected them in 2004 believed that lie), invaded, first Afghanistan, and then Iraq, killing 10,000 American and allied soldiers (kids), hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, while rendering over four million homeless, at a cost of at least two Trillion dollars. Bush then handed the whole chaotic, completely de-stabilized, Middle Eastern mess (along with the worst economic crisis in 70 years) to Obama.

Obama did his best to extricate the US from war. He has been mercilessly criticized by the Right for supposedly lowering America's credibility by not using the military - to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan; ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and wherever the hell else they might be; to blockade and/or bomb, rather than negotiate with Iran; to fix Egypt and Turkey; to remove Kim Jong-un from North Korea; to have prevented Russia's annexation of the Crimea peninsula in the Ukraine, etc., and so on.

Could Obama have done all these things? Sure, and if he had we would see wars everywhere you turned that would make the status quo look like Sunday school, and the "warmonger" label would be accurate.

You trivialize war and the carnage and cruelty it creates by calling a President who showed enormous restraint a warmonger. The United States is full of "warmongers." Thank god President Obama was not among them.

Trump? The verdict, vis a' vis American use of the military, is still out - but I, and most of the world, including I'm sure, Mr. Springsteen - are holding our breath.



TheAutographShow

Meet Bruce Springsteen in person at his Born to Run book tour appearances at the following dates & locations: September 27 — Freehold, NJ @ Barnes & Noble
September 28 — New York, NY @ Barnes & Noble Union Square
September 29 — Philadelphia, PA @ Free Library of Philadelphia
October 1 — Seattle, WA @ Elliott Bay Book Company
October 3 — Los Angeles, CA @ Barnes & Noble at The Grove
October 4 — Portland, OR @ Powell’s City of Books
October 5 — San Francisco, CA @ City Arts & Lectures
October 7 — New York, NY @ The New Yorker Festival
October 10 — Cambridge, MA @ The Harvard Coop
Can't make it? You can pre-order on eBay through us at: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pre-Order-Bruce-Springsteen-pre-signed-autobiography-hardcover-book-Born-to-Run-/182282048231?hash=item2a70db52e7:g:hkUAAOSwYIxX2iNm



All comments from YouTube:

John Hocking

There have been many moments when I have been enormously proud of the political/anti-war stands Bruce Springsteen has taken. He did so at the cost of the losing many fans.

I had attended at least two concerts on every tour beginning with Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978. He didn't play many Seeger Sessions shows and apparently none within driving distance of Athens, GA, where I lived (and live). It looked for a while that I was going to miss the Seeger Sessions tour entirely. However, I'm originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically, Concord, in the East Bay, which was the location of this concert, and was able to arrange to fly out.

Bruce had opposed the war in Iraq since late 2002, well before the invasion and occupation in March 2003. I don't know if I've ever been prouder than when sitting in about Row 10 as he sang this variation on the Pete Seeger classic written about the Vietnam War.

The video of this great performance disappeared from YouTube shortly after appearing. I'm delighted to see it again, ten years later. (This concert was on June 6, 2006, 10 years ago, tomorrow). Many thanks for uploading. I hope it stays forever.

Thank you, Bruce, and thank you, especially, President Obama, for bringing (almost all of them) home.

John Hocking

26,000 pounds, kilos, tons?  Regardless, how about a source?

Any number is meaningless without an answer to the implied question, "as compared to what," or in this case, "whom?"  Bush I (4 years), Clinton (8), Bush II (8), Trump (in 11 months).

darkbasex3

Never closed Guantanamo Bay

darkbasex3

John Hocking obama dropped 26.000 bombs in 2016 ;)

John Hocking

I perhaps have an explanation for your confusion. You label President Obama and Hillary Clinton, "the worst warmongers." Worse than whom? Surely not his predecessor.

I can only assume you are ignorant of the fact that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and a neo-con cabal, using false claims that Saddam Hussain had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and (implying) he was behind the 9/11 atrocities (80% of Republican voters who reelected them in 2004 believed that lie), invaded, first Afghanistan, and then Iraq, killing 10,000 American and allied soldiers (kids), hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, while rendering over four million homeless, at a cost of at least two Trillion dollars. Bush then handed the whole chaotic, completely de-stabilized, Middle Eastern mess (along with the worst economic crisis in 70 years) to Obama.

Obama did his best to extricate the US from war. He has been mercilessly criticized by the Right for supposedly lowering America's credibility by not using the military - to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan; ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and wherever the hell else they might be; to blockade and/or bomb, rather than negotiate with Iran; to fix Egypt and Turkey; to remove Kim Jong-un from North Korea; to have prevented Russia's annexation of the Crimea peninsula in the Ukraine, etc., and so on.

Could Obama have done all these things? Sure, and if he had we would see wars everywhere you turned that would make the status quo look like Sunday school, and the "warmonger" label would be accurate.

You trivialize war and the carnage and cruelty it creates by calling a President who showed enormous restraint a warmonger. The United States is full of "warmongers." Thank god President Obama was not among them.

Trump? The verdict, vis a' vis American use of the military, is still out - but I, and most of the world, including I'm sure, Mr. Springsteen - are holding our breath.

Mark HALLFORD

John Hocking ......Really confused here.....Obhama was at war his whole 2 terms of office, a complete war monger like Hilary Clinton. Trump is not much better, all talk but still bombing people.
Bit confused Bruce was on the same sude of the fence as the worst war mongers.

3 More Replies...

percy 12/37

I really love this man and His music!

Albanita Lyra Oliveira

Fantático,eu amo sua voz de todas as maneiras,pra mim é unico!!!!!!!

A Persian Nihilist

We'll give no more brave young lives
For the gleam in someone's eyes
Bring em home 🇺🇸❤️

Mitch Weiner

I've seen him in concert twice and he's the best I've ever seen in concert !

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