Minutes to Midnight (song)

"Minutes to Midnight"
Song by Midnight Oil from the album Red Sails in the Sunset
Released	1984
Recorded	June 1984 - August 1984
Genre	Rock
Length	3:07
Label	Columbia
Writer	Peter Garrett, Jim Moginie
Producer	Nick Launay, Midnight Oil
Red Sails in the Sunset track listing
"When the Generals Talk" "Best of Both Worlds" "Sleep" "Minutes to Midnight" "Jimmy Sharman's Boxers" "Bakerman" "Who Can Stand in the Way?" "Kosciusko" "Helps Me Helps You" "Harrisburg" "Bells and Horns in the Back of Beyond" "Shipyards of New Zealand"

Minutes to Midnight is the fourth track on the 1984 album Red Sails in the Sunset by Australian music group Midnight Oil. The song was written by band members Peter Garrett and Jim Moginie.

The title and lyrics of the song allude to the Doomsday Clock, the Cold War-era symbolic clockface maintained by the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, serving as a barometer for the likelihood of nuclear war (or more generally "catastrophic destruction"). The threat of a nuclear confrontation was a pertinent subject at the time the song was written, and the "three minutes" to midnight to which the lyrics allude was the real-life setting in 1984, the closest to midnight the clock had been set since 1953, and a setting which has since never been surpassed.^[1]

The lyrics warn of escalation in the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union ("ICBMs, SS-20s / they lie so dormant, they got so many"), and allude to both H.G. Wells and heralded Australian racehorse Phar Lap.

References

1. ^ "It is 5 Minutes to Midnight: Clock Timeline". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 2007. http://www.thebulletin.org/minutes-to-midnight/timeline.html.