“Have You Forgotten?”
Darryl Worley
Written by Wynn Varble and Darryl Worley
Radio & Records
#1 (6 weeks)
March 28 – May 2, 2003
Billboard
#1 (7 weeks)
April 5 – May 17, 2003
I didn’t enjoy this period of country music at the time.
So much of it felt like an invitation being rescinded. My love for country music was such a big part of my identity back then, and with this record, I heard the death rattle of that identity.
But now, so much time has passed, and there’s such an incredible ecosystem of country music that is heavily influenced by the 90s era, but operates outside of the restrictions of Music Row, musically and politically. Country radio has never been less relevant, and in turn, I’ve never been less concerned with what gets the blessing from the industry.
That said, this record still makes me sad. Not because I’m the intended target instead of the intended audience, but because it ultimately derailed the career of one of this century’s best country talents.
He has his Lee Greenwood moment here, but the sophistication of Darryl Worley’s songwriting and the sparkling traditional production that supported his emotive vocals, made him more like the Earl Thomas Conley of his time.
This record was a huge radio hit, but we’d be deprived of his empathy and wisdom soon after, with consumers and radio both turning away from him in the aftermath of this record. I’m really happy he is able to eke out another number one single, and this isn’t the final time we’ll talk about him.
Now onto the actual record. It’s well produced and sung with passion, but its value is primarily historical now. If I was still a classroom teacher, I’d use it as a primary source for this era of American history.
That is the beginning and end of its value for me, and everything else I want to say in response to it, Worley already said himself:
For this, I thank him. He may have forgotten there is more that unites us than divides us, but with time, he remembered.
“Have You Forgotten?” gets a C.
Every No. 1 Single of the 2000s
Previous: Joe Nichols, “Brokenheartsville” |
Next: Tim McGraw, “She’s My Kind of Rain”
I couldn’t find a way to Weave this into the post, but another thing I want to point out about where I’m coming from with this record:
As a native New Yorker, it was my neighbors who were “still inside there, going through a living hell.”
The war fervor being channeled here by Worley led to his neighbors dying, as our all volunteer military comes disproportionately from rural areas.
In the end, more American soldiers died in Iraq than American civilians died on 9/11.
They were all Americans, civilians and soldiers alike, and I will forever mourn those lives lost. I wish our better angels had prevailed back then. I wouldn’t mind them showing up today, either.
I am not a native of New York but I traveled to the World Trade Center on several occasions on business prior to 2000, and I lost a pair of co-workers in the disaster. Since this song did not arrive until 18 months after 9/11. I doubt that Worley’s song affected recruitment much.
Personally, I liked the song; however, I feel that we should have gone after the Taliban and left Iraq alone. Doing nothing would not have been “our better angels” prevailing.
“Doing nothing” in response to 9/11 was a fringe opinion at best, and we were already on the ground in Afghanistan when the song came out. Something like 90% of the country supported the military response in Afghanistan.
We were arguing against the Iraq war because it was a distraction from getting Bin Laden. Don’t pretend we were against doing something in response to 9/11. You know that isn’t true. A lot of us New Yorkers. thought America actually HAD forgotten about Bin Laden until President Obama and Secretary Clinton gave that terrorist the shot in the head that he deserved.
Worley was arguing against a straw man that didn’t exist here with his “Don’t tell me not to worry about Bin Laden” nonsense, and you just created one of your own with your twisting of my words.
I have a lot more patience for you doing that with my musical opinions than I do with you doing it about my moral convictions.
Do better, Paul.
The main objection that I have to “Have You Forgotten?” is both it and Darryl Worley seemed to question the very veracity and patriotism of those who were opposed to our going to war in Iraq, while Bin Laden was still out there running roughshod in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Those who were protesting the Iraq war felt that it was completely unnecessary; and many of them felt that Bush II was lying about the alleged connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, a connection that indeed did not exist. But Worley seemed to ignore this in his “screed”, equating any kind of dissent with our political leaders with disloyalty to our troops and the nation as a whole, and he was dead wrong in that equation (IMHO).
I wanted to ask so, SO many people championing this song (and the Toby Keith song, for that matter), ”were y’all even listening to country music before 9/11)?” It was pretty tough being an actual music fan AND a conservative back in those days.
It still is for me, but not because I like a lot of artists that don’t share my political beliefs — rather because so many people who do share my political beliefs STILL champion shitty music and/or shitty artists who line up with them. I know music’s always been political to an extent, but it’s just so tiring and aggravating.
I like it when music has different opinions than me. I think all should be welcome, but I will admit I can’t erase the disaster of this war from this song. “D” at best. And unlike “God Bless the USA”, this song will always be stuck in this exact time frame.
I make a pretty hard line of distinction between “God Bless the USA” and “Have You Forgotten?” The former is an eloquent and artistic anthem to love of country. It wouldn’t be the kind of song I’d write but it came from a place of love and inclusion. “Have You Forgotten?” is a sneering, condescending missive about a political issue that uses the cover of “patriotism” to settle scores against those the narrator deems insufficiently invested in spilling other people’s blood.
I mentioned in my last Darryl Worley review that he very clearly wanted to be an updated Merle Haggard. That worked to his favor in most of his early releases, but unfortunately his legacy is defined by extending that mimicry of Haggard to his most loathsome instincts. Just like Merle, Darryl Worley assessed the complicated and divisive playing field of geopolitics during wartime and the most salient conclusion he could come up with was……”other Americans’ opinions really suck!”
I’ve let it be known I’m averse to this kind of songwriting, but it was particularly odious here when the premise was built around a distortion. Worley insisted that this song was in response to the September 11 attacks and not the war in Iraq which had just been waged upon the song’s release. I wouldn’t have liked the message even if it was the former, but country radio and Worley’s record company amplified the high-stakes amoral messaging by blurring the lines. Millions of Americans reasonably believed that the message was about the war in Iraq and that our military action was about avenging Bin Laden and the September 11 attacks.
Worley’s single “Family Tree”, which was quite a hoot, was withdrawn from radio to make room for “Have You Forgotten?”, complete with a subsequent reissue of his album draped in the American flag. This was a collaborative effort of the worst kind of jingoism and, knowing how it all turned out, all parties in on the deception have lingering blood on their hands. This is particularly true since their deception played every bit as large of a role as neocon mouthpieces on cable news in connecting two unconnected dots in the public’s mind at a time where a hell of a lot more questions should have been asked.
And even just as a piece of music, “Have You Forgotten?” is agonizingly generic and lifeless. I didn’t love all five of Darryl Worley’s first singles equally, but they were all interesting in sound or scope. “Have You Forgotten?” sounded like it was recorded by a garage band in an actual garage. That it became the definitive anthem of 2003 spoke at multiple levels about a genre spiraling from recent greatness to the lowest imaginable denominator.
I’ll give Worley some credit for subsequent atonement for his one-dimensional persona of the “Have You Forgotten?” era. He had a more thoughtful take a few years later with “I Just Came Back From a War”, and seemed downright regretful for his role in fomenting our nation’s cold civil war with his 20-year update, “Have We Forgotten?” that he put out two years ago, hard as it was to hold back the PTSD listening once again to that ugly opening guitar riff so thoroughly representative of such an ugly song.
There was quite a bit of chatter in past reviews of what was and wasn’t “the worst #1 single of the 2000s”. It’s not even a close call. “Have You Forgotten?” was the worst #1 single of the 2000s…..or of any decade in my lifetime for that matter.
Grade: F-
I completely agree. I too give this song an F-and rank it worst country song of the 2000s along with Clint Blacks “Iraq and Roll” which luckily missed the top 40 entirely. Those right wing war hawk anthems were awful and were absolutely a part of country musics rapid decline in the 2003 era. It’s a pretty bipartisan opinion actually that 9-11 was the beginning of the downfall of country music and we have not been able to get back to the 90s since.
This is neck-and-neck with “The Little Girl” as my least-favorite of the entire decade.
Even in 2003, when I was 16, I saw the straw-man argument, even if I didn’t know what a straw man was. I may have hated “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” for igniting the aggressive red-state jingoism that still lingers to this day, but at least that song had a purpose. Both then and now, I have no idea what message this song is even trying to convey. (Side note: anyone remember “I Raq and Roll”, by far Clint Black’s worst single?)
This is just aimless meandering and whataboutism without a central premise. I got angry the more I heard it. I got angry when I realized “Family Tree” was pulled, and a new album was rush-released with a couple tracks off the previous two albums, just so HYF? could get a barely-an-album album that went gold. If it had remained a stand-alone single or a bonus track to an existing album, that might not have chafed as much. It also chafed worse that the follow-up singles got no attention at all, especially given how weird and quirky both “Family Tree” and “Tennessee River Run” were.
I especially boggle at the line “you say we shouldn’t worry ’bout Bin Laden”. Who wasn’t worrying about him at the time? And it just sounds weird to hear that line after Bin Laden’s death, or “this war” so long after actual war ended. Why did this song stay around so long?
I will give Darryl credit: he wasn’t nearly as aggressively jingoistic as some of his contemporaries, and his next soldier song, “I Just Came Back from a War”, was infinitely better on all counts. The rewritten “Have We Forgotten” shows him to be a lot more nuanced and level-headed.
Around the same time, Jamie Lee Thurston had a powerful song out called “It Can All Be Gone”. I only heard it once, and it only got to #56, but hot damn, do I remember it:
Got no time for jealousy, got no time for greed
And I ain’t gonna get bogged down in color, race, or creed
If I see somebody down, I’ll reach out my hand
‘Cause I believe that God is in the soul of every man
With a message like that, I wish Jamie Lee were the one holding a seven-week #1 in this time span. He even re-released the song not too long ago, so I think he stands by its message.
ETA: I saw Kevin’s comment above: “A lot of us New Yorkers thought America actually HAD forgotten about Bin Laden until President Obama and Secretary Clinton gave that terrorist the shot in the head that he deserved.”
I’ll admit I didn’t know that, and it does give context.
I got angry when I realized “Family Tree” was pulled, and a new album was rush-released with a couple tracks off the previous two albums, just so HYF? could get a barely-an-album album that went gold.
I did not remember that ”Family Tree” was pulled to promote HYF — I had a lot of crap going on in my personal life about that time and it was quite distracting — but I did remember the album that was cobbled together to promote it. That rubbed me just as wrong as the song itself. It was all so shameless.
“Iraq and I Roll” was an even stinkier turd than “Have You Forgotten?” in the abstract, but since it peaked in the 30s on the charts rather than spending multiple weeks at #1, it wasn’t as big of a blight on the state of country music in the 2000s as “Have You Forgotten?”
Also, as someone who thinks Clint Black spent 15 years coasting off the strength of his debut album, I no longer had a moment’s additional guilt for sending him to long-awaited exile after this one.
Clint Black started losing me as early as 1997. Somebody should have stepped in and told him how awful the lyrics to “Loosen Up My Strings” were. The only song of his I liked in the entire 2000s was “Been There”.
This is why I offered “It Can All Be Gone” as a counter-example to “Have You Forgotten?” and “I Raq and Roll”. People WERE making politically charged country music in this time span that had more nuance.
I don’t think I could name another song in my lifetime that was as big a hit as this one that aged more poorly.
As much as I really believed Worley was a rising generational talent, this song singlehandedly undermined all that hope and optimism with its flailing message.
With all the changes in American’s daily life after 9-11, the big question he asks in this song sounded disingenuous and baiting. How could anyone who had been to an airport after 9-11 forgotten? The creation of the Department of Homeland Security was was a reminder of how things had changed. The Patriot Act too. All the new vocabulary around the “War on Terror” made it hard not to remember what had happened.
Ask better questions.
Thankfully, Worley’s artistry would survive this moment, but Nashville would, in a cruel turn, forget Worley.