The Album That Predicted 9/11

You read that correctly. If you’ve never heard the story of the band Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” prepare to have your mind blown. From the release date to the lyrics to the album cover, it’s easily one of the most eerie albums ever. It’s also quite good (one of Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of All-Time) but that’s not the point of this blog.

Like the title says, the album seems to have predicted 9/11 well in advance of the attacks.

But enough talk, let’s get to the facts . . .

The Lyrics

Two songs in particular seem to predict the disaster on September 11th, 2001. Check out these lyrics from “Jesus, Etc.”:

Tall buildings shake
Voices escape singing sad sad songs …
Voices whine
Skyscrapers are scraping together
Your voice is smoking.

And from the song “War on War”:

Moving forward through the flaming doors …
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die if you want to be alive.

There is another song on the album called “Ashes of American Flags.” Yikes.

The Album Cover 

Yep, that’s two tall buildings alright. Strange and a little chilling, don’tcha think?

The Release Date

Although it was later changed, the album’s original release date was . . . wait for it . . . September 11th, 2001.

There’s really no explanation for all this, it’s just a weird, eerie, strange and fascinating coincidence. Either that or the dudes in Wilco are some sort of cosmic sorcerers or something. Either way, it’s an astonishing and mystifying album, don’t you agree?

Note: I got a lot of this information from an article on the site Cracked.com entitled The 5 Most Mind-Blowing Predictions Ever Made in Pop Songs. Pretty interesting stuff.