Darryl Worley has recorded“Have You Forgotten?”again, twenty-five years after the attacks that inspired it. He co-wrote the song with Wynn Varble in late 2002, weeks after returning from a troop tour in the Middle East, and he wrote it in response to something small and personal: the American flags that covered Tennessee porches right after 9/11 had quietly started coming down. Worley has said the song was never meant to divide neighbors. He wanted the country focused on a shared purpose instead of fighting itself.
This September, he’ll perform the song twice in two weighty places: the Pentagon on Sept. 10 and a New York City memorial on Sept. 11. The era also produced Toby Keith’s“Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,”Alan Jackson’s“Where Were You”and The Chicks’“Travelin’Soldier,”songs that outlasted most of the war-on-terror catalog because the wars themselves dragged on for years.
Nashville songwriter Andy Sheridan, who was in eighth grade on Sept. 11, 2001, says friends who served came home changed. And author Will Kaufman’s forthcoming book examines how American song has carried our arguments about war and country from World War II forward. A generation with no memory of that day now inherits both the music and the questions inside it. What song takes you right back to September of 2001? Tell us in the comments.
About the Author
Ava Hart
Ava Hart is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
