American atom bomb songs of the post-war period

In 1945 the Americans dropped two atom bombs on Japan, the first on Hiroshima and the second on Nagasaki. The destruction they caused heralded the end of the war in the Pacific. Immediately songs began to be written about the bomb. The first was Fred Kirby’s ‘Atomic Power’. Here, already, the bomb was linked to God and to apocalypse. In the years that followed, for roughly two decades, many songs were recorded about the bomb, and apocalypse, and many connected the bomb with female sexuality. Two key themes emerge. One was the Last Man. This theme, which had its origins in the nineteenth century, was centred on the idea of the end of humanity but was founded in the Adam and Eve story. The most well known of these songs was the Bill Haley remake of ‘Thirteen Women’. The second theme associates the explosive power of the bomb directly with female sexuality, exemplified by songs such as the Five Stars’ ‘Atom Bomb Baby’ (1957). What many of the songs in both themes have in common is the connection between the atom bomb and apocalypse. ‘Excessive’ female sexuality, apparently so desirable, disorders the postapocalyptic world.