Released 1984 Length 3:07 | Genre Rock Label Columbia | |
Recorded June 1984 - August 1984 Writer(s) Peter Garrett, Jim Moginie | ||
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. At that time, this was the closest to midnight the clock had been set. However, this setting was surpassed shortly after the inauguration of American president Donald Trump in January 2017, when the clock was set at two-and-a-half minutes to midnight.
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.