The 9/11 No Play List Revisited

The 2001 Clear Channel memorandum is a document distributed by Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia) shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to the more than 1,200 radio stations they owned. The memo contained a long list of what the memo termed "lyrically questionable" songs.

During the time immediately after the attacks, many television and radio stations altered normal programming in response to the events, and the rumor spread that Clear Channel and its subsidiaries had established a list of songs with lyrics Clear Channel deemed "questionable".

However, the list was not a demand not to play the songs listed, but rather a suggestion that they "might not want to play these songs".

Snopes.com did research on the subject and concluded that the list did exist as a suggestion for radio stations but noted that it was not an outright ban on the songs in question.

The feeling was that some songs were too sensitive to play in the aftermath of what was the world's deadliest terrorist attack.

Many numbers were related to flying, guns, fire and death, but others symbolize how raw and exposed Americans felt in those dark days.

Some are perhaps obvious, like Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young, Bob Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Drowning Pool's Bodies, James Taylor's Fire and Rain and Black Sabbath's Suicide Solution.

But then there is The Beatles' Ob la Di, Ob La Da because it includes the words "life goes on," The Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday because the attack was on a Tuesday, and Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World because the world wasn't on that day.