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Tragedy and troubadours: Many tried, but few succeeded in recording memorable reactions

by Thor Christensen
September 9, 2002

Tragedy might be the stuff of great operas. But more often than not, it makes for mediocre pop songs.

The dust literally hadn't settled from last September's terrorist attacks when musicians began composing the first of what became hundreds of elegies and anthems. They wrote from all sorts of angles – shock, anguish, rage, revenge – but many wrote, in part, out of a sense of duty.

Bruce Springsteen realized his fans were counting on him after the tragedy.
In Rolling Stone, Bruce Springsteen recalled hearing a fan yell "We need ya" at him shortly after Sept. 11: "That made me sense, like, 'Oh, I have a job to do,' " he said.

And perhaps, there's the problem. To quote that noted rock critic Ralph Waldo Emerson, "If a singer sing from a sense of duty ... I had rather have none. A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine."

Many of the post-9/11 songs feel weighed down by the job of trying to comfort a nation or make sense out of a senseless mass murder – a tall order for any writer, let alone a tunesmith used to writing simple tales of love and lust. A lot of songwriters responded by saluting Old Glory; a noble reaction, perhaps, but one that rarely makes for a lasting pop song (Francis Scott Key excepted).

"I will fight for the right/To live in freedom," chanted Paul McCartney.
Paul McCartney gave us "Freedom," which wasn't really a song as much as jingoist phrase repeated over and over: "I will fight for the right/To live in freedom." Country singer Toby Keith took an even more rabble-rousing tack with "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," building his tune on taunts ("This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage") and a thick slice of Meatloaf-style melodrama.

Even Neil Young – one of rock's better topical writers – couldn't muster a memorable tune. Inspired by Todd Beamer, the doomed hero of United Airlines Flight 93, he wrote "Let's Roll," a clunky funk-rock track that began like a novelty song (an ominous synthesizer, a ringing cell phone) and ended with the line "We're going after Satan/On the wings of a dove."

The more interesting tunes came from songwriters who broke free of the flag-waving chorus and viewed Sept. 11 from different vantage points. In "Combat Rock," the Portland punk trio Sleater-Kinney sang about blind patriotism ("Since when is skepticism un-American?") and tried to figure out why other countries hate the U.S. so much ("Are we innocent? Paragons of good?").

On "Spoonfed," from the Sept. 11-themed CD Vigil, New York folk singer Andy Germak sang from the eyes of an Afghan infant about the contradiction of Americans bombing his land while dropping rations on it. And Steve Earle came up with one of the most intriguing – and controversial – 9/11 songs when he sang from the viewpoint of American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh in "John Walker's Blues."

Instead of taking the easy route and editorializing against Mr. Lindh, Mr. Earle crawled inside the jailed soldier's brain and let him tell his own story:

"I'm just an American boy, raised on MTV/And I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads, but none of 'em looked like me,

"So I started lookin' around for a light out of the dim/And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word of Mohammed, peace be upon him."

Bruce Springsteen took a similar approach on "Paradise," one of the better songs inspired by Sept. 11 on his new CD, The Rising . Assuming the hushed voice of a fictional suicide bomber talking to himself – or maybe to God – he sang "I hold my breath and close my eyes/And I wait for paradise." Like Mr. Earle, the Boss found a deeper drama by painting a portrait of the bad guy instead of just lashing out at him.

And Loudon Wainwright III showed with "No Sure Way" that sometimes the most seemingly mundane story can be the most evocative. Singing about one man's subway ride through Lower Manhattan days after the towers collapsed, he nailed the feeling of a world turned upside down in two stark lines: "They say heaven's high above us and that hell's not far below/But inside that subway tunnel, there was no sure way to know."

Yet for the most part, the songs inspired by Sept. 11 were sadly lacking in poetry or originality. The few hip-hop artists who spoke up on the subject resorted to rah-rah-ism – Hammer's "No Stoppin' Us (U.S.A.)" – or blustery statements of self-importance.

"Together we stand, divided we fall/Mr. Bush, sit down, I'm in charge of the war," Ghostface Killah of the Wu Tang Clan rapped in "Rules." In "Tears," KRS-One bragged that he could ease all the pain created by the terrorists: "When the problems you face are too much to bear/Know I'll be there."

And an endless parade of singers kept repeating the same stock message: Keep your chin up (Mr. Springsteen's "The Rising," Joseph Arthur's "Build It Back Up") and seek comfort in God (Alan Jackson's "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," Dolly Parton's "Hello God," everyone on the Christian pop CD Let's Roll: Together in Unity, Faith and Hope).

At least "The Rising" had a great melody. But one big problem with so many of the Sept. 11 songs is the same problem that sinks any pop song: A lack of compelling music.

Three decades after the Vietnam War, radio still plays Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Ohio" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" not because the lyrics were that memorable – they weren't. Radio still plays the songs because the guitar riffs are timeless and the vocals still convey rage and pain the lyrics only hint at.

It's been said that musicians will still be writing songs about Sept. 11 years from now, songs that are better crafted and more enduring than those written just weeks or months after the tragedy. Some of the best films about Vietnam – Apocalypse Now, Platoon – weren't made until long after the war ended, the logic goes.

Yet that argument misses a crucial point. Vietnam was ready-made for pop songs and movies – a drawn-out war that sparked hot debates at home and pitted peaceniks, hippies and musicians against the U.S. government.

But Sept. 11 is far trickier to write about: The internal conflict is missing, since everyone agrees the terrorists are evil. So what you're left with is the slaughter of 3,000 innocent people, an event so tragic and horrific it almost defies being written about in a 4-minute pop song.

"The stark reality defies poetry/It mocks this melody," folk artist Richard Julian sings on "No Song" from Vigil. "As sure as time passes by/This pall will lift and singers will try/But they will fail and their songs will lie/There is no song ... there is no song."