Research paper thesis help needed ASAP!?

How about "The Vietnam War had a major influence on American popular music during the 60s and 70s." Thesis statements are easy. You just state your argument in one sentence.

You do not need a "because" in this thesis statement. It would not make sense. You are not arguing that the Vietnam War influenced music because of some other reason. You are simply arguing that the Vietnam War influenced music, period. In the body of your paper you can sub-divide it into different topics - such as types of music, general peace songs vs. expressly anti-war songs, political statements of famous musicians, etc. You can introduce those sub-topics in an "essay map" - the sentence right after the thesis.

A good way to approach writing a thesis is:

"I am writing to convince that ...... because...." then remove the "I am writing to convince that" because its your argument, therefore you state it like fact in your paper.

So you would write, "The Vietnam War had a major influence on music in that time period because..."

and you MUST write a because, because that is the most important part of your thesis, and the real beef of the argument in your paper. So just take the dot dot dot and give your main reasons for why you think the war affected music, or one broad reason, for however many reasons you have. The more specific the better- but not too long. Your thesis statement shouldn't end up more than 1 or 2 sentences.

I don't know much about the Vietnam War but what you should do is find out what music was like in the 1950s and try and relate it to the Vietnam War. For example does the music act as an escape route? Or do the composers want their listeners to realise what is happening out there?

Hope this helps!