"The Unknown Soldier" was the first single from The Doors' 1968 album Waiting for the Sun, and was also the subject of one of the band's few, inventive music videos. The song was Jim Morrison's reaction to the Vietnam War and the way that conflict was portrayed in American media at the time. Lines such as, "Breakfast where the news is read/Television children fed", concern the way news of the war was being presented in the living rooms of ordinary people.
In the middle of the song, the Doors produce the sounds of what appears to be an execution; in live performances Robby Krieger would point his guitar towards Morrison like a rifle, drummer John Densmore would emulate a gunshot by producing a loud rimshot, and Morrison would fall screaming to the ground. After this middle section, the verses return and the song ends with Morrison's ecstatic celebration of a war being over.
While the single for Unknown Soldier reached only #39 in the US, possibly due to its controversial theme, the second single from Waiting for the Sun, Hello, I Love You, went all the way to the top of the charts.
