First, he processed the horrors of the initial attack. Then, he watched college students celebrate the slaughter and university presidents demand we consider the “context” behind calls for genocide against the Jews.

“Where is everybody? Nobody’s saying anything, with the exception of a few people [like U2 and Madonna] … I had the idea of, ‘It’s a time for choosing, you know, evil is on the march,” he said.

At that point, “The lyrics came very quickly,” he notes. The song echoed a theme shared by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, whose fiery speech following the attacks hit him hard.

A culture where people celebrate torture, rape and murder isn’t well. Or, as the Mayor put it, “we’re not all right.”

“So that idea stuck in my head,” he explains.