Remembering 9/11, 25 Years Later: Songs From Alan Jackson, Toby Keith & Others That Helped Us Grieve

Twenty-five years ago, hijacked planes crashed into New York’s World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, leaving 2,977 people murdered and nearly 6,000 more wounded in the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history.

Americans reacted with a myriad of emotions — shock, horror, anger, sorrow and fear — but many also rallied together in unity and a show of support for the American military and each other.

Country music artists were among the first to put that range of complex emotions into song. Two country releases in particular seemed to capture the yin and yang of American reactions to the tragedy: While Toby Keith‘s “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American)” seethed with righteous anger and intense patriotism with lines like “We’ll put a boot in your a–- it’s the American way,” Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” focused on those who reacted in quieter ways, with lines such as “Did you go to a church and hold hands with some strangers/ Stand in line and give your own blood?/ Did you just stay home and cling tight to your family/ Thank God you had somebody to love?” Furthermore, songs like “Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly” by Aaron Tippin rendered a new meaning following the tragedy, having written the song more than two years beforehand.

Here, Billboard looks back at some of the country songs inspired by “that September day,” as Alan Jackson sang.