15 Years Later: The 15 Greatest Musical Tributes to 9/11

On the 15th anniversary of the greatest tragedy to befall modern America, it’s worth remembering not just the heroes who responded that day, but the poets who tried to make sense out of the senselessness followed 9/11. Songwriters as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Alan Jackson, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Taylor Swift, and the Beastie Boys echoed our brightest and most despairing feelings, some in the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks and courageous response, others after ruminating for months or years. Here are 15 of the best musical responses to that day:

Bruce Springsteen: “The Rising”/“Empty Sky”

As the only major artist to make an entire album loosely themed around the post-9/11 zeitgeist, Springsteen makes it hard to pick a single anthem from The Rising to represent that non-glory day. It really comes down to a yin-yang tie between the despairing “Empty Sky” and almost gospel-like title track. “Empty Sky” could speak for anyone who’s recently lost a loved one to murder, mass or otherwise: “I want a kiss from your lips/I want an eye for an eye.” But “The Rising” found the barest of hard-fought hope in the dual imagery of rescuers and souls ascending. When it comes to speaking in song for these United States — the depressed America, and the aspirational America — nobody does it better.

Alan Jackson: “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)”

In the days immediately following the attacks, various existing songs were adopted as anthems, from Five for Fighting’s “Heroes” to U2’s “Walk On” to Springsteen’s eerily appropriate “My City of Ruins.” But when it came to literally addressing 9/11, it was a humble country star that was the first responder. Jackson jotted down this ballad of bewilderment in the middle of the night almost as if caught in the throes of a case of automatic writing, but what he seemed to be channeling were the stunned thoughts of nearly everyone in America (even those who did know the difference between Iran and Iraq). When he premiered the song less than two months after the tragedies, Jackson’s ability to tenderly speak to the emotions of urbanites that’d never heard of him on top of his own fan base made for one of country music’s proudest moments.

Beastie Boys: “An Open Letter to NYC”

You’ve got to fight for your right to… recover. Reacting to the terror attacks is only a part of this musical mash note, but it’s the cornerstone, noting that “since 9/11 we’re still livin’, and lovin’ life we’ve been given… Dear New York, I know a lot has changed/Two towers down but you’re still in the game.” There’ve been bigger songs of NYC civic pride since, like “Empire State of Mind,” but nothing with the sense of urgency in this rebound anthem from New York’s finest.

Taylor Swift: “Didn’t They”

You didn’t know that Swift had a 9/11 song? Don’t worry, neither do 98 percent of her fans. That’s because “Didn’t They” has never been officially released, although a leak of the demo became widely disseminated and is easily found. If you think that Swift, as a young teenager, was going to look for the sweeter side of those tragic events, think again. In verse after verse, she addresses the problem of theodicy… or, in less specifically theological terms, why God allows evil. “Didn’t they need you bad enough?” she asks the Supreme Being, after “it all came down.” “Where were you? And didn’t they pray, too?” All those songs she penned later about bad boyfriends had nothing on the one she wrote when she was angry with the Almighty.

Neil Young: “Let’s Roll”

Over time, the aftermath of 9/11 would inspire a lot of calls to military action, from the likes of Toby Keith and Darryl Worley. This list isn’t about those. But there was an action story with a bittersweet ending embedded in the day itself, in the form of Flight 93. Just as Todd Beamer was ready to rumble as he and a few other passengers took on the terrorists on that flight, so was Neil Young ready for his own rumble, in the form of a rocker memorializing the struggle that prevented yet another massive loss of life on the ground in D.C. “There’s no more of a legendary, heroic act than what those people did,” Young said later, “not even having a chance to think about it or plan it or do anything — just a gut reaction that was heroic and ultimately cost them all their lives.” Although his response to 9/11 wasn’t quite “Ohio”-quick, Young was nearly as fast on the draw as Alan Jackson, getting his tribute to the courageous fallen out to radio in November 2001.

Suzanne Vega: “Anniversary”

In the early aftermath of 9/11, probably few people knew whether these would be events that would be brought back into the national consciousness every September or not. But on the first anniversary of the tragedies, in 2012, Vega certainly realized that for diehard New Yorkers like herself, there would be no forgetting, as she commemorated the unofficial commemoration: “Mark the month and all its anniversaries/Put away the draft of all your eulogies/Clear the way for all your private memories/As they meet you on each corner/Meet you on every street.” (Later, Vega would put together an entire compilation album of New York songwriters’ musings about 9/11, including another song she composed, “It Hit Home.”)

Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris: “If This Is Goodbye”

Nothing in Knopfler’s lyric addresses 9/11 in a specific way, but he has made clear in interviews that the song he wrote for his 2006 duets album with Harris was inspired by “those mobile phone calls from the towers—the calls to say ‘I love you.’” Listening to the ex-Dire Straits frontman and country’s most beautiful voice harmonize on this possible/likely farewell note (“Who knows if there’s a plan or not/There is our love/I know there is our love/My famous last words/Could never tell the story”), it’s easy to see why this smiling-through-tears heartbreaker has lent itself to becoming a funeral staple.

Talib Kweli: “The Proud”

Kweli’s song might be the most controversial here, as his verse about 9/11 follows a list of examples of unjustifiable in-house U.S. killings. “America kill the innocent, too,” he points out. But the hip-hop artist was not a denier when it came to the uniqueness of 9/11, and he pointed out: “We see the best examples of humanity in the face of the worst/As fire fighters, police officers, rescue workers and volunteers of all sorts fight to save lives” — not exactly anybody’s idea of a stereotypical rap sentiment.

John Mayer, “Covered in Rain”

Mayer never released a studio recording of this song, but it became a favorite via live albums, where he allowed it to stretch out at epic length. Its overt connection to 9/11 comes down to one line: “Standing by the missing signs at the CVS by the checkout line.” But that’s all Mayer really needs to do to set the context for a song in which he and his girlfriend are “drinking wine and watching CNN” and, “with the world getting colder, she spends more time sleeping over than I planned.” It’s a snapshot of a time when a lot of casual relationships became just a little more serious in the shadow of an apocalypse.

My Chemical Romance: “Skylines and Turnstiles”

Imagine forming a future near-superstar group and the very first song you come up with is about 9/11. That’s an auspiciously ambitious start, and it’s a big part of the origin story for My Chemical Romance, as Gerard Way found inspiration, of a sort, in the horrors of that day: “It reaches in and tears your flesh apart/As ice cold hands rip into your heart/That’s if you’ve still got one that’s left inside that cave you call a chest/And after seeing what we saw, can we still reclaim our innocence/And if the world needs something better, let’s give them one more reason now.” The group didn’t survive to the 15th anniversary, but this instigating song does.

Leonard Cohen: “On That Day”

As you might expect, the master took a less overtly emotional, more zen approach to the aftermath of 9/11 (“I’m just holding the fort”), pointing out the zeal of both America and its enemies before seemingly drawing a contrast between the loudmouths and the quiet heroes: “Did you go crazy, or did you report, on that day they wounded New York.”

Sleater Kinney: “Far Away”

This frazzled rocker begins with a nursing mother getting a phone call to “turn on the TV (and) watch the world explode in flames.” A political note is struck — “The president hides, while working men rush in and give their lives” — before a note of universal dread that everyone felt in those uncertain moments is struck: “I look to the sky, and ask it not to rain on my family tonight.” No mom could have said it any clearer.

John Hiatt: “When New York Had Her Heart Broke”

Hiatt wrote this song right after being in New York as the towers fell, but, not wanting to capitalize on the tragedy, he didn’t record it until a producer convinced him to commit it to tape 10 years later. “I had mixed feelings,” he told Billboard, but “I felt like there was some distance, and time takes a little bit of the sting out.” Ultimately it’s as much of a love letter to New York and its resilience as the Beastie Boys’ aforementioned track, although Hiatt does focus on how “the daylight fell dark/F16s over Central Park.”

Mary Chapin Carpenter: “Grand Central Station”

After hearing a radio interview with an ironworker who was involved in the rescue and salvage efforts at Ground Zero, Carpenter got to thinking about ghosts. “Those first few days there at ground zero, [the worker] felt it was a very holy place,” she said. “When his shifts were over, he felt this life-force was somehow asking for his help, and when he would leave his shift he figured, whoever wants to go, I’ll take him with me, and he’d find himself just going to Grand Central Station, standing on the platform, and figuring whoever wanted to go home could just catch the train home.” Bruce Springsteen was all about the rising, but in Carpenter’s vision, the recently departed take their leave in the way New Yorkers would naturally prefer.

Eagles: “Hole in the World”

The Eagles’ comeback ballad is the only one on this list that doesn’t include even one explicit reference to 9/11 or its aftermath. But no one had to read an interview with Don Henley about what inspired it to know the answer. For years, any song with “hole” or “empty” in the title (see also Juliana Hatfield’s “Hole in the Sky”) was as likely to be alluding to the absent Twin Towers as not. As Henley explained, though, he also meant the hole in the world to refer to the absence on the home front of soldiers who lost their lives overseas fighting the wars that came about in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. The Eagles mention a Promised Land in these songs song, but even as sweet as the harmonies are, they sound a little too weary to really believe in it.