About

Author(s): Raine Cox

Date project was completed: 10/28/2020

Discussion of steps taken in researching, designing, and producing the project:

I was inspired to complete this project by a question someone had asked on whether or not music influences culture or if culture influences music. I was originally going to look at political music and its effects on their causes and analyze whether or not popular political protest music inspired others to join movements. To narrow down my topic, I originally chose communist music and was going to track its political controversies and read narratives of others to see if it inspired them. That became a more intensive project that I had imagined. It also seemed that the music written, in a specific context, was used to apply subsequent movements and not only the one it had originally intended to be about. Or, even new waves of music. The original project was too difficult so I thought of a new project to have where I would see if culture influences music. I chose 9/11 because I knew there were songs about it, quite possibly ensuring I'd have something to talk about, as well I wanted to research effects that 9/11 had on culture in the immediate aftermaths of the attack. I decided to look at the top 20 songs on the Billboard Top 100 for 5 weeks before, and 5 weeks after the attack to see if there would be any changes to the chart. Then I wanted to graph out these charts and look at the timeline and the music switches within it, and analyze if the 9/11 attacks had much to do with it.