‘Have You Forgotten?’ Hell, No: A Reflection on Country’s 9/11 Songs, 25 Years Later

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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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.