Neil Young’s “Let’s Roll.”
The best 9/11 song I’ve ever heard was Jesus, Etc. by Wilco. Recorded many months before September 11.
In a New York Minute - Either by the Eagles or Don Henley. It’s about losing what you have in a flash (a New York Minute). You could even show [this video](Lying here in the darkness). I was listening to Clark Howard on 9/11 and he played this. I remember it vividly. It really struck home to hear the song.
Lying here in the darkness
I hear the sirens wail
Somebody going to emergency
Somebody’s going to jail
If you find somebody to love in this world
You better hand on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door
In a New York Minute
Everything can change
In a New York Minute
Things can get a little strange
In a New York Minute
Everything can change
In a New York Minute
“New York” by U2 is a good song-- it was written before September 11th but became something of an anthem as they toured the US at the end of 2001-beginning of 2002.
The one piece of music I always listen to on September 11th, however, is the first movement of Henryk Gorecki’s Third Symphony, aka “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”. It’s long (20+ minutes) but no other piece of music, in my opinion, captures so well the dignity of human sorrow.
For poems, there’s always “September 1, 1939” by W.H. Auden-- written upon the poet’s hearing the news of Hitler invading Poland, it’s an anguished meditation on the nature of extremism (one might say) and how the world can change in an instant.
Don’t forget “My City of Ruins.” Although it was written pre-9/11 and was about Asbury Park, N.J., Springsteen performed it on the America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon of September 21, 2001, and it took on an identity as a “9/11” song.
Me, I think the most appropriate song is probably “Trouble in River City” from The Music Man. That’s the one where the salesman needs to convince the town
that it’s in horrible trouble and the only way out is to buy his stuff, so he seizes on the fact that a bar in town just got a new pool table.
Or just Fear’s “Let’s Have a War” [“Let’s have a war/Jack Up the Dow Jones/ Let’s Have a War/ Sell the Rights to the Networks”]
I mean, no offense to the pain to the friends and families of the just over three thousand people who died in the attacks, but was their pain any worse than for instance the families of the five thousand people killed by drunk drivers that year (and each year since)?