Five albums that encapsulate the post-9/11 era
The entire aftermath of 9/11 isn’t something anyone could shake off.
As much as people wanted to move on, the non-stop coverage and bombardment by news outlets made it feel like the world was coming to an end and that any type of normality was a distant memory of the past. But for all of the harsh realities that the US had to confront at the time, artists like Bruce Springsteen helped to usher in a then-unthinkable era of “post” 9/11.
Granted, there’s also a right way and a wrong way to make a post-9/11 record. The whole idea behind records like this was about trying to capture the spirit of the times. Not everything has to correlate with the attacks directly, but when listening to these albums, there’s a definite feeling in the record that makes the air taste a lot different when you go outside and has an increased sense of paranoia than it did before.
And as much as some artists liked to be patriotic, not much of the chest-beating patriotism should be found on this list. This comes from people who were genuinely concerned about what a version of the world was going to look like after the shitstorm, and using their platform to make the world a better place rather than trying to annihilate the despicable public witchhunts for “terrorists”.
This was a tense moment for everyone in a country that was burning at the time, but whether people were simply hopeless, picking themselves up, or simply planning on surviving, they could always count on music to help get through. Because in times like these, music and art can speak in ways that nothing else can.
Five albums that encapsulate the post-9/11 era:
<em>Box Car Racer – </em>Box Car Racer
The last place that most people went for political analysis was Blink-182. What, you mean that the band that made songs that were all about juvenile jokes and singing about teenage angst didn’t have time to talk about the sad aftermath of 9/11? While it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that wouldn’t have worked, Tom DeLonge did have a lot to get off his chest once he formed Box Car Racer.
Although he already had the idea of making a heavier record than what did with Blink, the entire soundtrack to this record feels borderline apocalyptic, especially when you take into account songs like ‘Elevator’, which were written as a direct response to the attacks. A lot of kids who grew up listening to ‘All the Small Things’ probably didn’t need to hear songs like this just yet, but for any of the older Blink fans that had been with them since the beginning, it was nice to see DeLonge be willing to put his music on the line.
<em>One Beat – </em>Sleater-Kinney
In times of turmoil, you can always count on punk rock to help all of us through the worst moments. There was already the pop-punk boom happening around the same time, but when all of the problems with the world become frighteningly real, it’s important to keep everything in perspective. America was suddenly a different place on September 12th, 2001, but Sleater-Kinney was there to remind us that we couldn’t pretend we didn’t see the awful reality happening.
Since many stations were trying to carry on as if nothing had happened, many songs on One Beat serve to shed some light on the real problems. No one was ready to entertain the idea that going to war might be a bad idea, but hearing Corin Tucker’s savage critiques of George W Bush felt like she was singing what she needed to hear as opposed to what was being featured on the news every day. There was no way that it would resonate with everyone, but the best albums of the time usually give people what they didn’t know they wanted.
<em>American Idiot – </em>Green Day
What is far too often neglected in the aftermath of 9/11 is the restrictions that it placed on music going forward. For some reason, there were countless songs that were given a restriction by Clear Channel and were encouraged to not be played, and yet they could play a song like ‘Hero’ by Enrique Iglesias, which featured actual news audio from the attacks sprinkled into the mix. It was only a matter of time before someone showed that the emperor didn’t have any clothes on, and Billie Joe Armstrong figured punk rock was the best way to get his point across.
American Idiot may have waited a few years before being released, but it’s hard not to picture it as the archetype for a post 9/11 world. Even if you look past the protest songs against Bush, the entire story of the record involves kids trying to find their way through a world that has grown more paranoid than it’s ever been and wants nothing more than to beat them down. 9/11 might not be referenced in any of the songs, but you can feel that chilling atmosphere in the air on every single track.
<em>Heathen – </em>David Bowie
So this might be a bit of a weird one. As much as David Bowie loved living in New York during the final years of his life, he was never willing to make an all-out protest record once 9/11 took place. And despite a lot of Heathen being recorded and written long before the attacks took place, there’s an overwhelming synergy between the paranoia in Bowie’s lyrics and the feelings felt after 9/11.
Without breaking out the tinfoil hats, many of the lyrics of the album feel like they capture the sense of paranoia and anxiety that had been a part of his time in New York City prior to the attacks. Although Bowie denied any kind of legitimate connection between most of Heathen and what transpired that tragic day in Manhattan, there was certainly some kind of feeling in the air that he seemed to grab ahold of before the horrors of the day became frighteningly real.
<em>The Rising – </em>Bruce Springsteen
There’s usually no real way to say that any good things came out of 9/11. While many people can try to move on with their lives, it’s hard to convince anyone who lost someone in the attacks that things were going to be alright after their world came tumbling down in front of their eyes. It takes a lot for anyone to move on from that kind of tragedy, but it takes a special kind of musician to be able to find a sense of light in the darkness, and Bruce Springsteen was the perfect guy for the job.
It had been a while since the E Street Band got together, but Springsteen knew that he needed something more for The Rising. He wanted the chance to breathe life back into the nation, and every song on the record feels like capturing every piece of emotion people were experiencing at the time, from anger to confusion to sadness to eventual acceptance of everything. While the album was far from easy for anyone to make or even hear at the time, Springsteen wasn’t out there to make a tribute record. He knew that music brought people together, and in times of trouble, records like this can help heal even the most wounded hearts.
