Alan Jackson had been a top star in country music for nearly a dozen years, proudly carrying his traditional sound to unprecedented modern-day popularity. On the morning of the attacks, Jackson had just returned from his daily walk. He switched on the television and immediately heard the news.
Alan’s “songwriter instinct” took over and he was caught up in the desire to compose a song capturing his thoughts and emotions surrounding the attacks. It wasn’t his intention to write a patriotic song, and he didn’t want it to be vengeful either.
In it, Alan just wanted to tell about how he felt and how he knew other people must have felt on that terrible day Several weeks went by before he was able to put his emotions into a song. Finally, on the morning of Sunday, October 28, 2001, Jackson suddenly awakened at 4 a. m. with the melody, opening lines and chorus going through his mind. He hastily got out of bed and sang them into a hand-held digital recorder so he would not forget them.
Later that morning, after his wife and children had gone to church, Alan sat down in his study and completed the lyrics to “Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning).”Initially, Jackson felt uneasy about even recording the piece, much less releasing it, because he felt that people might accuse him of capitalizing on a tragedy. But after playing the song for his wife Denise, then for his producer Keith Stegall, it was recommended (by Stegall) that Alan play the song at a group meeting of his label’s executives.
RCA Label Group Chairman Joe Galante later remembered, “After the song finished playing, we all just kind of looked at one another in stunned silence. Nobody spoke for a full minute.”
Jackson was scheduled to perform at the Country Music Association’s annual awards ceremony on November 7, 2001, to be telecast on CBS.