From Billboard · Tom Roland · · 3m
Country's 9/11 songs, 25 years on
Darryl Worley re-recorded "Have You Forgotten?" for the 25th anniversary, and the country it asks the question of has changed.
In brief
Darryl Worley re-recorded "Have You Forgotten?" for the 25th anniversary, and the country it asks the question of has changed. Country's war-on-terror songs lasted because they were built from time spent with actual soldiers, not from headlines, and because the wars they describe never really ended. Originally…
Flags on the backroads
Driving home through Tennessee hours after the attacks, Darryl Worley saw flags and homemade patriotism on house after house.
Fifteen months later
Back from playing for troops in the Middle East, he drove the same streets. The flags were mostly down, and he felt the unity had gone with them.
A song out of that gap
Weeks later he wrote "Have You Forgotten?" with Wynn Varble, one of the few country hits to record what the country actually felt about the attack and the wars that followed.
The same song, a new country
For the 25th anniversary Worley cut it again, deliberately close to the original. It lands differently because the nation listening to it does.
Nobody forgot
Anyone who watched the towers fall or heard the newscasts about Flight 93 has an easy answer to the title's question, says author Will Kaufman.
“I don't think anyone's forgotten.”
But a generation never knew
Young writers and label staff have heard the songs and the stories without living any of it. Worley says 9/11 must feel to them like Pearl Harbor felt to him.
“It must feel to [kids] like Pearl Harbor did to us.”
A whole shelf of songs
Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue," Alan Jackson's "Where Were You," Brooks & Dunn's "Only in America," The Chicks' "Travelin' Soldier" and more.
Every war gets its records
World War II brought "There's a Star-Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere" and "Mussolini's Letter to Hitler." Vietnam brought "The Ballad of the Green Berets," until the public mood soured.
Why these ones stuck
The WWII titles had mostly left the air 25 years after Pearl Harbor. The 9/11 songs still play on classic country. Kaufman's explanation is blunt: World War II ended.
“There's a good reason for that. World War II eventually ended.”
Patriotism as ammunition
Kaufman traces a line from the 1979 hostage crisis through the Gulf to now, which keeps the old war songs current, and useful to anyone wanting to move the public mood.
“I think these songs are so popular because they're part of the arsenal.”
Worley's actual aim
He wanted the song to point people at enemies overseas, not at the other political party. Time with troops in the war zone is what sent him home wanting to honor them.
“Being in the war zone and spending that time with the troops was very, very motivating.”
No songs for this war
Nothing written for the current Iran campaign has caught on commercially, and polls show the public isn't behind it. Worley calls the whole thing bothersome and fears another conflict that drags.
“It's bothersome that it can't be what we thought it was going to be: over and done with.”
The ripples reach the kids
Songwriter Andy Sheridan was in eighth grade in 2001. Friends enlisted after graduation, served, and came home different. Now he's giving his 12-year-old the facts and letting him decide.
“The ripples of war stretch out far, far, far beyond the initial event.”
Loss over flag-waving
These songs centered grief, lost innocence and separated families rather than slogans, which is why they may teach better than the jingoistic stuff. Jackson's live re-release ends on faith, hope and love.
“Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us/And the greatest is love.”
In short
Country's war-on-terror songs lasted because they were built from time spent with actual soldiers, not from headlines, and because the wars they describe never really ended.
