The video for today’s song is of a fictional American Civil War night battle where the band performs on the battlefield. The Union regiment is victorious and the band follows the Union troops as it marches confidently on while the young soldier exemplifies fulfilment in answering the song's central question, "What do I stand for?" The music video on YouTube has been viewed nearly 218 million times.
There are A LOT of music influences on this song: The lead singer has commented that both Paul Simon's Graceland and his song Cecilia \were both influences on today’s song.
A line in the lyrics, "this is it boys, this is war", is a callback to "99 Red Balloons", the English version of Nena's 1983 hit "99 Luftballons".
The song expresses the anxiety of a young man who is a long way from home and was a sleeper hit in the US, spending approximately seven months on the Billboard Hot 100 before reaching a peak of number three.
Today’s song from 2012 was this indie pop band's second top 10 song.
By 2014 the band’s breakout star; guitarist, drummer and producer, Jack Antonoff, decided to do some side projects- like co-write and co-produce the biggest album that year: Taylor Swift’s 1989. He also started and fronted his own band Bleachers.
He’s since produced for some of pop’s biggest stars like Pink’s Beautiful Trauma album and Lorde’s Melodrama.
There’s still no word on if this band is going to release the album they teased in 2015 when they announced they were not breaking up but simply taking a break to pursue other projects.
Fun. Some Nights. I know that song