Can Songwriters Convey What Everyone Is Feeling?

How much slack should we cut mediocre music just because it’s well-meaning?

That’s a question that has been raised frequently in the year since Sept. 11 as an army of songwriters--including three Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members--has stepped forward to comment on the horror and heartache of that unprecedented event.

In most cases, the only good thing we can say about their efforts is that they have been well-meaning.

Is there anyone in America who didn’t roll his or her eyes when Paul McCartney performed his new song “Freedom” during an otherwise touching performance at last October’s “The Concert for New York” at Madison Square Garden?

Or is there anyone who didn’t yawn when Neil Young came along last year with “Let’s Roll,” his tribute to the passengers on the hijacked United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania to thwart that leg of the terrorist attacks?

Even the normally reliable Bruce Springsteen occasionally stumbled in his album “The Rising,” trying so hard to offer comfort to the nation that he ended up padding the 73-minute collection with some generic, feel-good exercises.

Several country artists also checked in, with Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” and Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” representing the extremes of emotion.

There’s a winning sense of homespun humility about the Jackson tune, and we’ll probably hear a lot of it on Sept. 11 retrospectives in coming days:

Did you feel guilty ‘cause you’re a survivor?

In a crowded room did you feel alone?

Did you call up your mother and tell her you loved her?

Did you dust off that Bible at home?

Like most of the Sept. 11 songs, however, “Where Were You” lacks the grace and wonder of the most inspiring music. It sounds like “Hey Jude,” however, next to Keith’s clumsy battle cry, which includes the lines:

This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage

And you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A

‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass.

It’s understandable that successful songwriters (as well as scores of aspiring ones) feel compelled to express themselves in a time of trauma. They have been blessed with the ability to communicate and feel it is their duty to make music, the same way a firefighter feels it’s his or her duty to go into a burning building.

In the process, it is easy to lose artistic discipline and judgment. The biggest mistake is trying to write an anthem that addresses the topic head-on rather than with a poetic distance.

It was touching that McCartney was one of the first to volunteer for the New York benefit concert last fall, but “Freedom” was lyrically stiff and it lacked the soothing melodic touches of his best work.

The veteran rocker apparently thought the emotion suggested by heartfelt declarations such as “I will fight for the right to live in freedom” would give the song power. They didn’t.

Young seemed to feel a straightforward description of the passengers’ brave actions in the plane would be enough to give “Let’s Roll” a sense of drama and fervor. It wasn’t.

Even Springsteen was a bit too literal in choosing images for “Into the Fire” and “The Rising,” the two songs on his new album that speak most directly to the events of Sept. 11. In concert Saturday at the Forum, he sang “Into the Fire” with such conviction and eloquence that it came marvelously alive. On record, however, there’s a flatness to lines such as, “I need you near, but love and duty called you someplace higher.”

The most moving songs on his album are the ones that look at the lingering emotional wounds of the day, including “Empty Sky,” “You’re Missing” and “Paradise.” It’s hard to listen to those and other key songs from “The Rising” without flashing back to the heartbreaking images of those days--from the crumbling towers to the hundreds of photos of missing loved ones that were posted on walls near the World Trade Center.

That’s why, of the high-profile Sept. 11 compositions, Springsteen’s do the best job of offering comfort and perspective.

But his isn’t the only approach. Where the New Jersey native wanted to urge the shaken nation to “rise up,” another major singer-songwriter felt compelled to say, “wake up.”

Steve Earle’s new album, “Jerusalem,” won’t be released until Oct. 8, but it is already attracting attention--and criticism--because of “John Walker’s Blues.” In the song, Earle tries to put himself in the shoes of John Walker Lindh, the 21-year-old Californian who has pleaded guilty to fighting alongside the Taliban militia in Afghanistan. Walker is expected to be sentenced to 20 years in prison. The song includes the lines:

We came to fight the Jihad and our hearts were pure and strong

As death filled the air we all offered up prayers

And prepared for our martyrdom.

Earle is prepared to hear some boos when he goes on tour this fall, but it won’t be the first time. Once called the Springsteen of country music, Earle has been a vocal opponent of the death penalty, penning such eloquent songs as 1995’s “Ellis Unit One,” which suggested that executions damage rather than strengthen the fabric of society. That’s not a popular position.

Asked about the new song this week, Earle said by phone from his studio in Nashville, “As soon as I heard about Walker, I thought about my own 20-year-old son and how I would feel if it was him. I am not OK with anybody taking up arms for any reason, so I have some major problems with what John Walker did in that sense. But I didn’t like the way everyone was so quick to vilify him.

“It seemed a symptom of a larger problem. There’s a tendency in times like these to give our law enforcement officials and military a blank check to do whatever they want to. That’s not what our country is about. We’ve got to treat everyone’s civil liberties fairly, even if it’s John Walker.”

Despite their different tones, the music of Springsteen and Earle offers the most memorable musical statements coming out of Sept. 11, and it is important to recognize that the words of Earle are as well-meaning--in the best sense--as those of Springsteen.

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Robert Hilburn, the Times’ pop music critic, can be reached by e-mail at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.