Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)

"Where Were You"
Song

"Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" is a country song composed by Alan Jackson. Written in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and introduced at the Country Music Association's annual awards show on November 7, 2001, it reached the top of the Billboard country charts in only six weeks and became Jackson's career-defining song in the same way that "Okie from Muskogee" defined that of Merle Haggard.

Composition

As was true of most Americans, Jackson was devastated by the events of 9-11. He wanted to write a song expressing his thoughts and emotions, but he found it hard to do so for many weeks. "I didn't want to write a patriotic song", Jackson said. "And I didn't want it to be vengeful, either. But I didn't want to forget about how I felt and how I knew other people felt that day."

Finally, on a Sunday morning in late October 2001, he woke up at 4 a.m. with the melody, opening lines and chorus going through his mind. He hastily got out of bed, still in his underwear, and sang them into a hand-held recorder so he wouldn't forget them. Later that morning, when his wife and children had gone to Sunday school, he sat down in his study and completed the lyrics..

By the time he finished, Jackson's words reflected the shock and hope of a nation in the aftermath of one of its worst single-day tragedies. The verses focused on others' reactions in the form of questions. One verse asks, "Did you lay down at night and think of tomorrow?/Go out and buy you a gun?/Did you turn off that violent old movie you're watchin'/And turn on I Love Lucy reruns?" In the chorus, Jackson tries to sum up his own feelings, first by calling himself merely "a singer of simple songs", and finally by paraphrasing the Biblical New Testament's first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13: "Faith, hope and love are some good things he gave us/And the greatest is love."

Initially, he felt squeamish about recording it, much less releasing it, because he disliked the idea of capitalizing on a tragedy. But after he played it for his wife Denise and for his producer, Keith Stegall, and it met with their approval, Jackson went into the studio to record "Where Were You" that week. On Stegall's advice, Jackson played the finished track for a group of executives at his record label. "We just kind of looked at one another", RCA Label Group chairman Joe Galante said later. "Nobody spoke for a full minute."

Introduction

Jackson was scheduled to perform at the Country Music Association's annual awards ceremony on November 7, 2001, to be aired on CBS. Originally, he planned to perform "Where I Come From", which at the time was the #1 hit on the Billboard country charts. But mere days before the awards show, Jackson's manager, Nancy Russell, played a recording of "Where Were You" for four of the CMA's top executives. All four were crying by the time the song ended.

The day before the show, CMT had a brief note on its web site that Jackson would be introducing the new song during the awards telecast. The next night, after an introduction from the show's host, Vince Gill, Jackson performed "Where Were You" seated on a stool, with an orchestra and backing singers behind him. At the conclusion of the five-minute-long song, the audience gave him an immediate standing ovation.

Reception

Commercial

Radio's response was swift and almost unprecedented. The next morning, many stations already were playing Jackson's new song after taking it from the broadcast. Several pop-oriented stations, including one in New York, started to play it as well. Based almost entirely on that unsolicited airplay, "Where Were You" debuted at #25 on the Billboard country chart the week ending November 24, 2001, the highest debut since "The Thunder Rolls" by Garth Brooks debuted at #19 in 1991. A week later, with Arista finally having serviced a promotional single to radio, it jumped to #12. On the December 29 country singles chart, "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" was the #1 song. It had taken only six weeks to get there, the fastest rise to the top in four years. The song spent five weeks at the top, and it also became a Top 40 pop hit, peaking at #28. At the time, it was Jackson's biggest country and pop hit.

Jackson's record label determined that it could not manufacture a commercial single fast enough to meet demand. Instead, Arista pushed up the release date for the new CD, Drive, from May to January 15. Arista also chose to include both the studio version and the live CMA Awards version on the new CD. The pent-up demand for "Where Were You" helped propel the album to the top of both the Billboard country and pop album charts, becoming Jackson's first #1 on the main album chart. It spent four weeks at the top.

Critical

Critical response to the single was largely positve. Deborah Evans Price (with Billboard) remarked "A multitude of songs have been written and recorded in the wake of Sept. 11. But none captures the myriad emotions unleashed by the terrorist attacks on an unsuspecting nation more perfectly than Jackson's eloquent ballad".

Later in 2002, "Where Were You" won both the Academy of Country Music and CMA honors for "Song of the Year" and "Single of the Year". In 2003, "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" earned Jackson his first (and so far only) Grammy award, for "Best Country Song". It was also nominated in the overall "Song of the Year" category, a rarity for a pure country song, but it lost to "Don't Know Why", written by Jesse Harris and a hit for Norah Jones. It was also ranked 28th on CMT's list of the "100 Greatest Country Songs".

Jackson' reaction to "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" was this: "I think it was Hank Williams who said, 'God writes the songs, I just hold the pen.' That's the way I felt with this song."

Cultural impact

The song was also satirized by the South Park episode "A Ladder to Heaven" which accuses Jackson of merely using people's emotions to create a hit song and make money (as when he sings a chorus in which he simply repeats the phrase "9/11" while crowds of people begin to cry). He makes several versions of the song within the episode including, "Where Were You When They Built That Ladder to Heaven?", though when Stanley, Kyle and Cartman end the episode with a speech about heaven being more of a state of mind than a physical place, Alan Jackson's audience leaves and Jackson complains about the children ruining his career.

A parody of the song, called Freedom Isn't Free, is used in Team America: World Police, also created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The song is played during a montage where the main protagonist, Gary, is visiting various American patriotic sights (such as the USMC War Memorial, amongst others) and deciding whether to join Team America or not

Track listings

US promotional CD single Arista Nashville 69118

1. Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) 4:58
2. Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) 4:58
   (same version appears twice)

US 7-inch single Arista Nashville 69129

1. Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) 5:05
2. Drive (For Daddy Gene) 4:03

External links

1. "Video of the 2001 CMA performance (scroll down)". Retrieved 2007-06-02.
2. ""Alan Jackson Memorializes Those Lost" by Hon. Mac Collins of Georgia (PDF)". Congressional Record. November 16, 2001. Retrieved 2007-06-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)