Wartime Pervades Pop-Music Consciousness

“Beyond typical wartime attitudes of belligerence, protest and yearning for peace, in 2006 pop moved toward something different: a mood somewhere between resignation and a siege mentality. Songs that touched on the war in 2006 were suffused with the mournful and resentful knowledge that — as Neil Young titled the album he made and rush-released in the spring — we are ‘Living With War,’ and will be for some time. Awareness of the war throbs like a chronic headache behind more pleasant distractions.”