How Post-9/11 Music Spurred the Unending American Culture War

Twitter didn’t exist yet, so musicians used the airwaves to wage ideological war.

Written by Myah Taylor

Photos courtesy of Reprise Records and Matthew J. Lee/ The Boston Globe

It was a decade that began in panic, and only more chaos would follow — the 2000s were as tumultuous as they come. But it wasn’t new technology, negligent politicians, or an economic crisis that came to define the first 10 years of the new millennium (there’s plenty of that to go around in 2021). Rather, it was that fateful day in September 2001, much like the onset of the pandemic last March, that changed American life … forever. 

Suddenly, the nation, still in mourning, became fixated on “weapons of mass destruction,” “freedom versus security” and protecting the “American way of life.” Terrorism was that day’s COVID-19, though the government appeared much more vigilant about combatting the former — anyone not dialed into the hypernationalistic rhetoric surrounding the ‘war on terror’ was simply “un-American.” And so the post-9/11 culture war ensued. Of course, music from each camp — George W. Bush supporters and critics — was there to soundtrack all the hysteria.

Country singer Toby Keith took the ‘traditionally’ patriotic route. In his 2002 single “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” Keith appealed to the pro-war agenda; it was that era’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” The song’s lyrics detail the singer’s reverence for the flag and the troops fighting overseas, as well as his rage about the attacks that transpired on Sept. 11. In the track, Keith seems to identify with the millions of other Americans who had bought into Bush’s idea that the U.S. conflict in the Middle East was about protecting freedoms other nations apparently found so threatening. In one repeating verse, Keith takes a staunch America First position:

Justice will be served and the battle will rage

This big dog will fight you when you rattle his cage

And you’ll be sorry that you messed with

The U.S. of A.

‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass

It’s the American way

The song, with additional lyrics that describe bombing another country “like the fourth of July,” was a hit. Two years after Keith released “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” Bush ran for re-election, and the artist, who at the time described himself as a conservative Democrat, voiced his support for the incumbent. He told Newsday later in 2007 that he never actually supported the war, but acted out of patriotism. “I don’t apologize for being patriotic,” Keith said. “If there is something socially incorrect about being patriotic and supporting your troops, then they can kiss my ass on that, because I’m not going to budge on that at all.”

Photo courtesy of M. Caulfield/WireImage

A year before Keith released his song, fellow country singer Aaron Tippin revealed a similar dedication to Old Glory in his track “Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagles Fly,” which debuted almost immediately after the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Proceeds for the song went via the Red Cross to families impacted by the tragedy. In the track, Tippin sings over sunny, acoustic guitars and spunky drums, “I pledge allegiance to this flag / And if that bothers you well that’s too bad.” In subsequent years, country artists continued to release more patriotic tunes.

Though they shared residence with Keith and Tippin on country radio, the Chicks (formerly known as the Dixie Chicks), were critical of the president and his leading role in the War in Iraq. Lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience at a concert in 2003 that she was ashamed that Bush was also from Texas, the band’s home state. She also wasn’t a fan of Keith’s song, calling it “ignorant.” With many of their listeners right-wing war supporters, country radio stations blacklisted the group. Fans of the Chicks also withdrew their support, destroying their CDs and sending the trio death threats over Maines’ 'treasonous' remarks. Keith perpetuated this idea at his concerts, showcasing an edited photo of Maines alongside Saddam Hussein on the stage with him. In today’s terms, the members of the Chicks were ‘canceled.’ Their 2006 track, “Not Ready To Make Nice,” a response to the controversy and its effects, won them Grammy awards for Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

Other acts had more liberty to speak their minds in their respective music scenes. The members of Green Day were as fearless as they were free from the confines country radio placed the Chicks in. As anti-establishment pop-punk rockers, dissent is what they knew. So, dissent is what they did. The band’s seventh studio album, 2004’s American Idiot, opens with the title track, a song that directly opposes the rhetoric in Keith and Tippin’s tunes. A signature Green Day track, “American Idiot” condemns the paranoia and pro-war “redneck agenda” that came to characterize the country post 9/11. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong doesn’t hold back when he sings about America’s hostile climate over dirty, speeding guitars:

Don’t want to be an American idiot

One nation controlled by the media

Information age of hysteria

It’s going out to idiot America

Armstrong’s critique of Bush’s America didn’t stop there. His take down of the U.S. government is just as scathing in “Holiday,” a song where he poses as a representative of California who calls out America’s anti-Muslim ideology, imperialistic motivations, and criminalization of those who speak out against the establishment. “There’s a flag wrapped around a score of men / (Hey!),” Armstrong sings in one verse. “A gag, a plastic bag on a monument.” 

Armstrong told Spin that “American Idiot” was not explicitly aimed at the Bush administration, but where America was heading in general. “It’s about the confusion of where we’re at now,” he said. And the disillusionment continued. In a performance of the song on “Saturday Night Live” in 2019, the group took digs at Donald Trump, replacing the “redneck agenda” lyric with “MAGA agenda.”

The divide over what patriotism actually entails still persists long after Keith, Mason, the Chicks, and Armstrong defined it for themselves — is it upholding the flag and finding no flaws with one’s country or is it speaking out against a nation that many feel could change for the better? That being said, other music released in the years following 9/11 wasn’t Keith or Mason’s version of patriotic. Songs such as the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where is the Love?” didn’t fixate specifically on conflicts in the Middle East, but on domestic issues such as police brutality, which remains pervasive. In that track, lead vocalist will.i.am raps about the great American dichotomy over a funky pop beat:

Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism

But we still got terrorists here livin’

In the USA, the big CIA

The Bloods and The Crips and the KKK

Outkast echoes similar sentiments in the 2003 single “War,” which sees the rap duo not only condemn the government's war on terror, but also the war on drugs. “‘Stead of watchin' these sucker MCs / I’m seein' how they lyin' to the general population,” Big Boi raps in the first verse, regarding mainstream media outlets and the U.S. government.

After the song transitions into a chorus of tick-booms, then real explosion sounds, he muses about the electoral controversy of that time: the 2000 Presidential election, which resulted in Bush’s victory over Al Gore despite his failure to win the popular vote. The election came down to a recount in Florida, where Bush’s brother Jeb was governor, because the votes were too close. The outcome was controversial, of course. Big Boi called fraud, just as millions would in another American election 20 years later: “The media shucked and jived now we stuck — damn!” the rapper remarks.

In 2007, Keith said politics were killing America. And maybe he was right. Or like the music coming out in the 2000s, ‘politics’ were a mere symptom of something much deeper.

Freedom versus safety still fills the American consciousness in a time characterized by disinformation on social media and breaches in public health protocol. Police brutality and other acts of racism or intolerance still mobilize people to take to the streets — or to Twitter. Vitriolic discourse — the type America feeds on — didn’t start in 2016. That’s only when it became magnified. The current state of political polarization and unrest is where the nation has been headed since the Twin Towers fell.

More recently, artists have continued to make ideological battlecries through their music just like their post-9/11 predecessors. Kendrick Lamar has used his music to champion Black people. Childish Gambino has called out America for its failures. Country radio still loves America with all its heart, though some new ideas are slipping in. Today’s America is different than the one during the Bush years, yet it’s the same. 

In an America characterized by ardent religiosity, Bush was known to cite his Christian faith. And the Bible verse, Ecclesiastes 1:9, rather fittingly describes the ongoing culture war that inspired Green Day and alienated the Chicks, that sparked a surge in patriotism and called into question who and what the flag really represents: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

There’s nothing new under the sun, not even the present culture war. Just listen to the music that soundtracked the post-9/11 breakdown of a forever-altered America.