In the days after 9/11, US media conglomerate Clear Channel sent an internal memo to each of the 1,100 radio stations it owned. It included a list of more than 160 ‘lyrically questionable’ songs that programmers and DJs might want to consider not playing in the wake of the attack on the Twin Towers.
Drowning Pool’s Bodies was on the list, as was AC/DC’s Shot Down In Flames, every single Rage Against The Machine song and – what?!? – Alanis Morissette’s Ironic. Also in there was System Of A Down’s Chop Suey!, the first single from the LA band’s second album, Toxicity, which had been released that very week. The lines ‘I don’t think you trust in my self-righteous suicide/I cry when angels deserve to die’ were deemed too much for post-9/11 America to take, and the song was quietly pulled from the Clear Channel network.
“In music, that’s a badge of honour,” says System guitarist Daron Malakian. “So many great rock bands have been banned. It’s almost like you’re not part of the cool group if you’re not banned once or twice. I think it made the song more popular.”
