Best Album Released On 9/11

Beulah, Professor Griff and Slayer were winning the 'best ironic title' award until I spotted Dream Theater's

Slayer albums title appropriate

Jinx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzRSOBz1dzk

write-in for The Coup's "Party Music"

as a lifetime Slayer fan with two Slayer tatts, it is not Slayer at all.

voted for Jay-Z.

also fuck yes to Party Music. that and Steal This Album spent years in my cd changer

John Hiatt, The Tiki Bar Is Open

This already figured to be a miserable affair.

for years I mistakenly thought SOAD - Toxicity came out on 9/11 but it did not (in the US at least)

Roland Orzabal, Tomcats Screaming Outside
Boz Scaggs, Dig

Wait, WHAAAT?!

for years I mistakenly thought SOAD - Toxicity came out on 9/11 but it did not (in the US at least)

One week before. And Slipknot's Iowa came out one week before that.

Fun personal fact: My first book was also released on 9/11.

"hey, how are sales looking?...Yes, I am aware. Yes...I own a tv. Yes, it's currently on the news.....Still waiting for an answer"

Voted Dylan but that Beulah album is pretty dang good. I got it as a freebie while doing some street team nonsense.

there really was no love in the heart of the city that day (voted for jay-z)

Going with The Convincer. Was in a Tower Records in Chicago midday on 9/11 when the store announced that it was closing for the day. Picked up Love and Theft, but hearing The Convincer at a listening station (and not having heard songbook-style Nick Lowe before) immediately won me over.

Beulah, Professor Griff and Slayer were winning the 'best ironic title' award until I spotted Dream Theater's

― imago, Monday, 23 June 2025 16:51 (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ben Folds, Soil and Techno Animal a little on the nose too.

voted for YNQ since I doubt anyone else will, plus I've definitely listened to it more times than the Jay and Bob albums

beulah and the microphones are albums that I still play heavily to this day so one of them

This jogged something in my mind, and I remember being surprised to learn that Sting actually recorded a live album on 11 September 2001, after the attacks had happened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_This_Time_(Sting_album)

"The events leading up to the night of the performance were filmed, and during these events on the day of the performance, the September 11 attacks perpetrated against the United States occurred, and the assembled group of musicians was made aware of this. The group performed the concert as originally intended, although Sting indicated on the DVD documentary the tone of the evening was quite different from how it was originally intended. Additionally, the "Desert Rose" performance featuring vocalist Cheb Mami was canceled due to the same circumstances."

Which raises the question of how the audience felt during the concert. Nowadays they would have been glued to their smartphones, but this was 2001 and smartphones were incredibly rare. Instead people lived in the moment, happy and free, and there weren't any mass shootings or terrorist attacks. Why did I look up that album? I was curious to see if anything was released on 09 November that year. It was a Friday. Seemingly the answer is no.

Moldy Peaches s/t includes this, just incredible timing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUcoRjhynB0

Love & Theft, an album so wrapped up in my headspace in the months after 9/11.

thinking about a 9/11 tattoo with the twin towers labeled "love" and "theft" maybe with dylan's face floating in the middle. what sorry

Show some fucking respect ffs

By doing that

now cursed by looping "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" in dylan's voice in my head

My answer was Southern Rock Opera but apparently it was released one day later on Sept 12 — I remember pretty much everything being on Tuesday back then so not sure how they got the Wednesday slot.

jet fuel can't melt steel beams
said Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

I went to a market in Prague in 2003 and there was a stall selling a huge metal cigarette lighter, one of those ones that sit in the middle of a table, it was a foot high at least, and it was in the shape of the twin towers, one with a plane sticking into it, and a huge bust of Bin Laden in front. When you pressed the button, flames would come out of the top of both towers, plus two on either side of Bin Laden's head in the shape of devil horns. The stall was also selling knuckle-dusters and flick knives, it was like their theme was "things you really shouldn't have in your luggage if you fly to the USA"

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was released on 9/18 (self-released by the band). That and L&T are the two albums I associate with that period of time.

Two other albums released on September 11, that are not listed here are Solex's Low Kick and Hard Bop and Bad Ronald's Bad Ronald.

I remember buying L&T in the Virgin Union Square store, must have been less than a week after 9/11. I got a free t-shirt with the purchase.

Solex's Low Kick and Hard Bop

Oh woof what an omission. Would've voted for this

I actually bought the Bad Ronald CD, I had no idea it was released on 9/11, makes the opening line "I've been waiting all day for that Bad Ronald" hit a little differently

Voted Dylan, who i assume will rightfully walk this.

However, the two albums which are inseparable from my memory of that day are Stereolab’s “Sound-Dust” and Bjork’s “Vespertine”, both of which came out 2-3 weeks before. I bought them both on 9/10 and spent the next day listening to them over and over and over and over again in a daze.

I thought Is This It? came out on 9/11, but I probably just bought it that day.

All is Dream by Mercury Rev came out on 9/11 on the US and is missing here. Though I probably wouldn’t vote for it, it’s the only CD I bought that week (I got it at my local Best Buy).

XP

Is This It? was already out in the UK and other territories, and was released on vinyl stateside on 9/11, but the CD was set to be released in America two weeks later on 9/25 before being delayed a further two weeks in order to replace "New York City Cops" with "When It Started".

I mean, it's still The Blueprint.

Solex's Low Kick and Hard Bop
Oh woof what an omission. Would've voted for this

My own actual answer is a write-in too (Bis' excellent techno excursion Return To Central)