On Sept. 11, 2001, Darryl Worley drove the backroads in Tennessee on his way home and was impressed at the public outpouring.
Just hours after terrorists flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a substantial number of flags and other outdoor expressions of patriotism were already on display at numerous houses. America’s unification didn’t last long; fifteen months later, as he returned from performing for American soldiers in the Middle East, he drove the same streets. The flags were mostly gone, and so — he lamented — was the unification. A few weeks later, he co-wrote “Have You Forgotten?” with Wynn Varble (“Waitin’ on a Woman,” “A Little More Country Than That”), crafting one of the handful of country hits that documented the nation’s attitudes about the attack and the wars that were launched in retaliation.
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As Americans observe the 25th anniversary of that September day, Worley has released a new recording of the song. It sounds, intentionally, quite similar to the original version, though it has a different feeling, because the nation itself feels different. The central question of “Have You Forgotten?” has an easy answer for anyone who saw the twin towers fall on TV or heard live newscasts about the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.
“I don’t think anyone’s forgotten,” says Will Kaufman, author of the forthcoming book American Song and Struggle from World War II to MAGA: A Cultural History (Nov. 19, Cambridge University Press).
True. But a whole generation of emerging creatives and executive staff in the early stages of their careers in music have heard the stories — and many of the songs — but don’t actually remember. They were too young to have experienced it or hadn’t yet been born. Their world is a different place than the one their parents experienced, in part because of 9/11, and adults are left to explain how the wars in the Middle East affected the kids’ lives. It’s the renewal of a regrettable tradition that most age groups unfortunately inherit. Baby boomers, for example, similarly heard tales from their parents about how World War II had shaped the culture into which they were born.
“I think about it all the time,” Worley says. The 9/11 attacks, he notes, “must feel to [kids] like Pearl Harbor did to us.”
One major way in which 9/11 influenced the culture came with country music’s reaction. A bundle of songs reflected the attitudes about war and patriotism that followed the attack. Among them: Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” and “American Soldier,” Aaron Tippin’s “Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly,” Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America,” Lonestar’s “I’m Already There,” David Ball’s “Riding with Private Malone,” Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.,” The Chicks’ “Travelin’ Soldier” and Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).”
That happens with most wars. World War II inspired such country songs as Elton Britt’s “There’s a Star-Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere,” Red Foley’s “Smoke on the Water,” Gene Autry’s “At Mail Call Today,” Bob Wills’ “Stars and Stripes on Iwa Jima” and Carson Robison’s “Mussolini’s Letter to Hitler.”
The genre likewise scored a few successful singles related to the Korean War and cranked out a bundle during the Vietnam War — such as Sgt. Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets” and Johnny Wright’s “Hello Vietnam” — until the public mood turned sour. At that point, Johnny Cash’s “What is Truth” gave credence to young people’s opposition, and pro-war fare mostly dried up.
The 9/11 songs have inarguably held up better than country’s previous war songs. Some of these songs can still be heard on classic country stations 25 years after the terrorist attacks. By comparison, the World War II titles weren’t in circulation much 25 years after Pearl Harbor.
“There’s a good reason for that,” Kaufman maintains. “World War II eventually ended.”
The wars in Iran and Afghanistan, he explains, dragged on, and they can be considered continuations of the early-90s War in the Gulf, which was built on leftover antagonisms from the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 and ’80. The president has on numerous occasions connected the current faceoff to 1979, thus many of the war songs that worked in those earlier eras still have similar meanings in 2026. The songs typically convey some level of patriotism, and, Kaufman suggests, that makes them useful to the American psyche. And to forces who might want to influence that psyche.
“I think these songs are so popular,” he says, “because they’re part of the arsenal.”
That’s not necessarily why they’re created. Worley wanted “Have You Forgotten?” to unify people — to make them remember that the country’s enemies are hostile players from other shores, not the members of a rival political party.
Having seen the men and women on the front lines who risk their lives and sacrifice time with their families, he valued the sense of service that motivated them.
“Being in the war zone and spending that time with the troops was very, very motivating as far as coming home, wanting to do something that would honor them,” he says.
Worley maintains his own sense of service with “Have You Forgotten?” He was scheduled to perform it Sept. 10 during a commemorative event at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and again on Sept. 11 during a memorial in New York City.
Still, support for the people who do the grunt work of wars doesn’t necessarily equate to support for the war itself. Public support for a war, it could be argued, correlates with the volume of country music’s commercially successful songs about it. If any country songs have been written to back the current campaign in Iran, they haven’t caught on commercially. Polls suggest the public is not behind it. The war certainly hasn’t inspired Worley.
“The whole thing is bothersome,” he says. “It’s bothersome that it can’t be what we thought it was going to be: over and done with. I just feel like it’s taken on the similarities of other conflicts we’ve gotten into, that could drag on for who knows how long.”
Younger creatives may not be writing new material about the Strait of Hormuz, but those who were alive during 9/11, and old enough to be aware of it, have not forgotten that war. They are, in fact, acutely aware of the ways it affected their generation.
“The global war on terror was obviously ongoing for a long time,” says songwriter Andy Sheridan (“Gonna Love You,” “Indigo”), who was in eighth grade in 2001. “I had friends that joined the Army after they graduated high school. They went and served in the military, and then came back and were not the same. So it is personal. This is a dark thing that happened in our history, and obviously the ripples of war stretch out far, far, far beyond the initial event.”
Sheridan, who is a history buff, has a 12-year-old son, and is trying to make him aware of the facts around 9/11, though he is reticent to influence his son’s beliefs.
“He’ll form his own opinions about it at some point when he’s older, when he maybe understands a little bit more of the world,” Sheridan says.
Country’s war-on-terror songs might help that understanding better than some of the genre’s predecessors because of the way that they were written. Focused mostly on loss of life, loss of innocence and family separation, the 9/11-era songs are typically less jingoistic than those from previous eras’ wars. Instead of grabbing their narratives from headlines, even the pro-military titles — including “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” and “Have You Forgotten?” — were crafted around first-hand experiences with soldiers.
The songwriters, one might suggest, learned from the earlier battles. Some politicians, unfortunately, have not. The ICE incarcerations and anti-Muslim rhetoric of 2026 are the same sort of atrocities, Kaufman notes, as World War II’s “yellow peril,” in which Asian-Americans were rounded up and incarcerated. Polls show Americans generally agree that that was wrong.
“I don’t think these things can be can be disconnected,” Kaufman says.
“Have You Forgotten?” reminds the nation indirectly that its military should be deployed wisely, risking soldiers’ lives only when the sacrifice makes sense. But a new live version of Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” re-released in conjunction with the 25th anniversary, addresses all of war’s suffering by referencing a Biblical passage: “Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us/And the greatest is love.”
That, too, is worth remembering in every generation.