19 (song)

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See also: 19 (number)

Nineteen is a track by English musician Paul Hardcastle, released in 1985. The track is about America's involvement in the Vietnam War and the effect it had on the soldiers who served. With a mini-Moog synthesized dance beat, interspersed with slides and LFO-squeezes (or vibratoes), the song features sampled actual news reports from the war and soundbites by its participants. The title Nineteen famously comes from the (disputed) claim the average age of an American combat soldier in the war was nineteen.

For a while Nineteen was the top selling single in thirteen countries, and it received the Ivor Novello award for The Bestselling Single Of 1985. However Hardcastle was later sued by the ABC for copying video and sound clips from an ABC television documentary about post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by veterans, called Vietnam Requiem.

The same year British comedian Rory Bremner under the name of the band The Commentators came out with a parodied version of the song N-n-n-n-nineteen Not Out, which was about England's recent tragic performance in test cricket.