What's a song based on actual events?

So there has been a lot of songs written about historical events. Some amazing anthems were written during and about the civil rights movements and tomorrow we are going to talk about anthems because they are not songs about the event, they are songs written for the event. So songs about specific events and what took place are a unique category, because they are written accounts and were written after the event.

Initially the first song that came to mind was U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday. I had been thinking about that song recently as there was recent news about the soldier who fired the first shot on the protesters that day, that ended up resulting in 14 people dying. He is finally facing some very overdue charges. But I didn’t go with that song and I will tell you why….

So I have been reading Mitch Michael’s book Doin’ The Cruise – dointhecruise.com and thoroughly enjoyed reading about all the radio antics of my radio bud. I haven’t finished the book yet but one chapter that stayed with me is early on. Mitch was attending Kent State when that terrible shooting occurred. His book is well worth a read just for that chapter alone. His perspective of how the events unfolded and his part covering the news for a radio station was so interesting (terrible and haunting but interesting.) I think because I have two college aged sons it also hit me hard. So for this music challenge question I went with a Neil Young song called Ohio. I actually don’t really like it as a song but the lyrics are haunting and describe that terrible day so well.