It’s Friday – the day of the week when I share a quotation intended to be informative or enlightening. That seems nearly impossible only one day after learning how many millions of Gen Z know-nothings stumbled across the rantings of Osama bin Laden (I suspect this wasn’t an accident) and pronounced themselves impressed by the warped mind of the mass murderer of 3,000 innocent civilians.
But I’ve reached into the vault and found something.
When this nation was attacked 22 years ago from the skies that Bruce Springsteen would describe as “the same unbelievable blue,” Americans reacted in many different ways. As I’ve written in this space before, we prayed and cried and mourned and raised money and held hands and went to places of worship. We also cursed and vowed vengeance, rushed into burning buildings to save strangers and rolled up our sleeves to clear away rubble and gave blood and volunteered and went to war.
Amidst it all, musicians recorded and performed a varied canon of tunes. Some were old, some were new, and some were old ballads with new meaning.
It started right on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, where Democrats and Republicans literally joined hands and sang “God Bless America.” The song then became a staple in the famous cathedrals of Major League Baseball – and remains so in many ballparks.
The nation’s most accomplished singers and songwriters repurposed old anthems: Bruce Springsteen’s “My City of Ruins” was given a new context, as were Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” which was reprised by Wyclef Jean.
These songs helped. So did the new music.
While pulling out of his driveway, Springsteen was exhorted by a fellow New Jersey motorist, “We need you now!” Springsteen obliged and did more than write songs from the heart: He actually spoke with widows and other 9/11 survivors – he did reporting, in other words – to better capture their feelings and voices. Out of this effort came “The Rising,” an entire album about the tragedy. The line I quoted above is from one of its haunting songs titled “Nothing Man,” which I’m listening to as I prepare this piece.
Other stars rose to the occasion, sometimes in surprising ways. Three decades after Neil Young galvanized the Vietnam-era peace movement after the Kent State shootings with “Ohio,” the Canadian-born rocker paid homage to Todd Beamer and the heroes of United Airlines Flight 93 with a new song: “Let’s Roll.”
Similar themes were heard in country music. Earlier in 2001, Toby Keith’s father, a U.S. Army veteran, had died in a car accident, and after 9/11 Keith dashed off a tribute to his father and other veterans in an aggressively patriotic tune called “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).”
The song certainly delivered on its subtitle: “We’ll put a boot in your ass,” goes the chorus, “it’s the American way.” At first, Toby Keith declined to record this song, preferring to sing it only on U.S. military bases – where it was cheered wildly.
It wasn’t all that long, however, before normal partisan impulses took over. By 2003, Toby was playing that song at campaign-style rallies for President George W. Bush, even as Springsteen was stumping for John Kerry. (As for Neil Young, he eventually composed another tune he titled “Let’s Impeach the President.”)
One notable exception was country singer Alan Jackson. A Georgian with a strong but soothing voice who still wears a cowboy hat and writes unabashedly about family and faith, he was an unlikely cross-over artist – until he wrote “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning.”
The idea of this ballad is that the world didn’t really stop turning – it was up to us how we responded to the horror of the 9/11 attacks.
“Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones and pray for the ones who don’t know?” Jackson sang. “Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble and sob for the ones left below?”
Each verse presents a series of choices, not judgmentally but with a gentle nudge toward love over hate:
“Did you lay down at night and think of tomorrow – or go out and buy you a gun? Did you turn off that violent old movie you’re watching, and turn on ‘I Love Lucy’ reruns?”
Jackson was taking a walk when the first plane hit. He saw the second plane strike the World Trade Center on the television in his kitchen. At 4 a.m. Sunday a few weeks later, he awoke with a tune going through his head. The words came to him as he sang them into a tape recorder, and he completed the song after his wife took their children to Sunday school.
Unsure he wanted to release a song that capitalized on a national tragedy, Jackson played it for his wife and manager, both of whom found it moving. He recorded it a few days later and played it for a group of executives at his record label.
“We just kind of looked at one another,” RCA Label Group Chairman Joe Galante later recalled. “Nobody spoke for a full minute.”
If you don’t know the song, take a listen. If you don’t have time right now (it’s about five minutes long), the message is about empathy and community and family and faith. Here are the last two lines of the chorus:
“Faith, hope, and love are some good things He gave us. And the greatest is love.”
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics and executive editor of RealClearMedia Group. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
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