Tragedy may be a powerful impetus for great art -- but September 11, it's sad to say, resulted in a lot more bad songs than good ones. A typical playlist of 9/11 music would be awash in melodrama and overstatement, knee-jerk chest-thumping and maudlin sogginess.
But that's not to say that some artists didn't rise to the occasion -- though to come up with a list of 10, I widened the net and broadened the scope. Is a 9/11 song only a song about or prompted by the attacks?
Or can a 9/11 song be something else: a song about the U.S. response to the attacks, or a song about the uncertain new world that was left in the rubble of the World Trade Center, or even a song that was written before 9/11 but came to take on greater meaning and resonance in its aftermath?
I've defined a 9/11 song as all of those things. Some of these are songs, some are albums, some are compositions; some are healing and uniting, others partisan and divisive. Together, they're 10 of the most powerful responses to 9/11 … with a few bonus tracks thrown in for good measure.
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BRUCE SPRINGSTEIN: "THE RISING" (album)
You could take the straightforward route and just list the songs that deal most directly with 9/11.
Those would be "Into the Fire," "Empty Sky" and the brilliant four-song stretch that ends the album: "You're Missing," the title track, "Paradise" and "My City of Ruins," the last of which was written before the tragedy but recorded afterwards.
But Springsteen's album, rock 'n' roll's most significant response to 9/11, bears the losses of that day between the lines of nearly every song. Even "Mary's Place," a party anthem of sorts, has loss rather than jubilation at its core; when Springsteen sings "let it rain" over and over, he's clearly trying to wash away the tears.
"The Rising" (live performance):
Bonus track: There's a similar mood to "When New York Had Her Heart Broke," which John Hiatt wrote after 9/11 and just got around to releasing this year -- but lyrically, the song is a little too undernourished to stand with the likes of "You're Missing" or "Into the Fire."
JOHN ADAMS: "ON TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS"
The commission came from the New York Philharmonic, and the text of Adams' 25-minute choral composition came from the posters of missing people plastered across lower Manhattan.
The composer, a former minimalist whose best-known works include "Shaker Loops" and the opera "Nixon in China," crafted a richly layered, occasionally dissonant and challenging requiem (he calls it "a memory space") for a city transformed.
Recorded by the philharmonic with the New York Choral Artists and Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the composition won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003 and a Grammy for contemporary composition in 2005.
