Dixie Chicks: Travelin' Soldier Meaning

Song Released: 2002

Travelin' Soldier Lyrics

Two days past eighteen
He was waiting for the bus in his army green
Sat down in a booth in a cafe there'
Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair
He's a little shy so she gives him a smile
And he said would you mind sittin' down for a...

1. anonymous

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   May 26th 2016 !⃝

   I love this song it is just so calming. I did love a soldier who always travelled around.
2. anonymous

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   May 11th 2016 !⃝

   The man that sang "original song", as one person noted--unless there is an older one that I can't find--was Bruce Robison, who, at the time, was the brother-in-law of one of the Dixie Chicks. If you listen to his version, you can here that they are singing back-up. I don't know which actually sang the song first, though, although they were certainly sung around the same time.
3. anonymous

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   May 25th 2015 !⃝

   Most of this song is self explanatory until you realise that the Dixie chicks version is a cover version and the original song was sung by a man.
   
   That's where the third person / first person stuff gets confusing.
   
   He sings about the boy and the girl in the third person, until the line 'I cried'.
   
   So what is his relationship to the girl?
4. anonymous

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   May 4th 2015 !⃝

   I've never been able to tell from the lyrics "Crying all alone under the stands
   Was the piccolo player in the marching band
   And one name read and nobody really cared
   But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair" if that means she was the piccolo player and he died so she was crying or if the piccolo player is someone else and the pretty little girl with the bow in her hair sympathizes and comforts them.
   I used to think it was the latter but now that I'm older I've begun to wonder if he did die.
5. anonymous

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   Feb 9th 2015 !⃝

   i have two interpretations - one is that the soldier she fell in love with died, and one is that she wasn't the girl who played piccolo in the marching band and her soldier did come home.
6. anonymous

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   Jun 23rd 2014 !⃝

   I really love this song cuz it is a unique song showing a sad love story
7. JordanB2

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   Apr 16th 2013 !⃝

   This song is basically about a guy who just turned 18 and is enlisted in the army and he sees a girl in the cafe and talks to her after her shift because he has no one around him. He ends up writing letters to her and they fall in love. Then when he gets deployed to Vietnam he dies in war and she doesn't know until at a local football game the announcer says the list of names of soldiers who died in Vietnam and his name is announced. She is the only one who cares.
8. anonymous

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   Apr 11th 2012 !⃝

   i think that travelin soldier is a good song because it reminds me of my mom and dad because my dad was in the army, and this is how my mom would feel
9. anonymous

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   Mar 16th 2012 !⃝

   This song tells about the struggles of a young man in war with only one person to talk to one person to know is waiting for him.
10. anonymous

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    Oct 26th 2009 !⃝

    This song does explain itself. I always feel like crying when it gets to the part about the piccolo player crying alone under the stands. I play the piccolo, and I am very emotional. This song does a great job of explaining the agony of waiting for someone to come home from a war.
11. anonymous

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    Apr 17th 2008 !⃝

    It's about her waiting on a soldier to come home.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway

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