Songfacts®:

• Edwin Starr followed up his #1 hit "War" with "Stop The War Now," which makes the same statement with a few variations. Both songs are urgent calls to end war, although Starr insisted that "War" was not specifically about Vietnam, but dealt with gang wars and other domestic disputes. "Stop The War Now" references conscription ("A knock on the door, there's a letter from the war") and the death toll ("Casualties pile up each day, cemeteries are overflowing"), leaving no doubt it's about the Vietnam War, which was a quagmire by the time the song was released at the end of 1970.
  
  Starr joined the US Army in 1960 but was discharged in 1962 before the Vietnam War escalated.
• "Stop The War Now" is a Motown joint, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, the same team that wrote "War." Edwin Starr was on the label because he was part of the roster of another Detroit label, Ric-Tic Records, which Motown acquired in 1968. Starr had a few minor hits on Ric-Tic but blossomed at Motown, first with "Twenty-Five Miles" in 1969, then with "War" in 1970, which was a #1 hit. "Stop The War Now" peaked at #26.
• Edwin Starr took some heat for releasing such a similar song as his follow-up to "War." He defended the song in an interview with Disc and Music Echo:
  
  "The only similarity is the reference to war. The relation to the word 'war' has a tendency to bother most people and they think they're getting the same record twice. If people would only stop trying to see a similarity and listen to the lyrics they'd see why this had to be the follow up. If I'd gone in any other direction it would have been completely farcical and people would have thought it just a monetary thing."
• The song makes reference to John Lennon's 1969 protest song "Give Peace A Chance" with the line, "All we got to do is listen, give peace a chance."
  
  Other songs from this time period that reference Lennon's song include "I've Seen All Good People" by Yes and "California" by Joni Mitchell.
• Motown fans weren't at all surprised when the label followed one of their big hits with a near duplicate. They put out a lot of product, and if they found a successful formula, they'd stick with it for as long as the market would bear.