Todd Mack is a singer/songwriter, Producer, former band member, former studio head, and founder of a music-based non-profit Music in Common, dedicated to increasing mutual understanding in communities across cultural and social divides through music. His new solo album, marking a return to personal releases after many years, arrived in 2025, I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What.
Operating in music of more than 40 years, Mack’s work has taken him all over the world, giving him a unique perspective, and it continues to do so. This week, on September 11th, 2026, Todd Mack will be releasing new single “9-11+25”, in memorial to the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.
As with his previous album, for this new song, Mack again teamed up with producer and multi-instrumentalist Rob Vermeulen of Robbo Music, and Vermeulen plays guitar, bass, and keys on the song, which recounts the tragic events of 9-11 and the responses that followed. The song moves from Ground Zero to the decisions of the nation’s leaders in the days, months, and years that followed.
Mack brings his personal reflections to the song, as we all do to memories of 9-11. For Mack, his brother in-law had been in the North Tower of the World Trade Center just 15 minutes before the first plane hit, narrowly escaping. The same was true for a friend who worked at the Pentagon and became one of a few survivors of his department.
Particularly impactful on Mack’s choices in life was the fallout when his friend and band mate, Daniel Pearl, a WSJ reporter, was abducted and brutally murdered by extremists while on assignment in Pakistan four months after the attacks. Pearl was beheaded by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, third in command of Al Qaeda and the mastermind of 9-11, bringing all these threads together for Mack. And this led him to found the non-profit Music in Common.
Today, we’re honored to premier Todd Mack’s new track, “9-11+25” here on Wildfire Music + News.
Any song dealing with tragedy, protest, or social failures is difficult to approach, from a songwriting perspective, but Mack’s approach is refreshing, clear-eyed, and uses the machinery and support structure of Blues Rock to bear the weight of the subject he’s taken on. At over five minutes, the track also has plenty of room to explore and breathe, thanks to Mack, and the construction of the lyrics is particularly careful, using each verse to focus on a particular element of telling the story of the events of 9-11 and the separate reactions and outcomes that followed. This even leads up to modern day, which is what we really need during this era of reflection on the events of 9-11, not just a time to continue mourning a great tragedy and horrific acts of violence, but to contextualize them in a way that we can apply to our current lives. We still live in the post-9-11 world every day.
Mack uses very visual language in his lyrics, with images that linger after hearing the song, like New York City “on fire”, and the leveling of a skyline, something that had seemed unthinkable previously to 9-11. The moderate pace and rhythm of the song gives extra weight and space to the heavier phrases in the song, like, “Death shows no mercy down there.” Not to be carried too far into poetic territory, Mack focuses on the human and the ordinary, quite purposefully, and that’s part of the great strength of the song, the blending of large-scale vision and emotion with journalistic accuracy and depth. We see little glimpses of humanity bringing help to other humans, flashes of potential light, but overall, this is a scene of unrest. Rest didn’t descend once the dust had settled at the Twin Towers site, and Mack confirms that by spending a large portion of the song discussing the aftermath of 9-11 and our current political reality.
The use of strong, Rock-tinged backing vocals gives a sense of community to this song, a groundedness that contrasts with the more spectral powers that be, leadership, and the choices that leaders make when they are not accountable to the populace. The “tell it like it is” approach of the song also makes prophetic statements about possible futures for us, including “best beware of what’s coming next” when “leaders fail to lead.” The bleak look forward includes the reminder that if nothing changes, “endless wars will never end.” With “9-11+25” Todd Mack takes us on a guided journey of the realities, emotions, and impacts of 9-11, while also asking us to accompany him a few steps forward into the future. Making a difference starts with taking a good look at difficulties now, and difficulties that lie ahead, and so Mack uses this opportunity to spell out how little ground we’ve covered in preventing wide-scale suffering since 9-11 happened. He suggests that until we find a way to do that, “still nobody is free.”
Started in the wake of the attacks, “9-11+25” was written in fits and starts over the course of 25 years. Mack finished the song shortly after the recent U.S. attacks on Iran.
Mack shares about the song:
For the past two and half decades I have struggled to make sense of the terrifying death of the nearly 3,000 innocent people who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and the thousands more since in response. My intention is to honor those fallen with empathy, compassion, and respect while also calling into question the decisions and motives of our leaders in the 25 years since.
“9-11+25” was Produced by Todd Mack & Rob Vermeulen, recorded and mixed by Rob Vermeulen, and mastered by Mark Fuller, with additional recording by Jasper Deal at The Track Shack in Atlanta, Georgia. On the track, we hear Todd Mack on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Rob Vermeulen on lead and rhythm guitars, bass, and keys, Daryl Vandruff on drums, Bree Soul on backing vocals, and Trey Carlisle on percussion and backing vocals.
So far, Todd Mack has released eight albums. In 2025, he released the single, “Floyd”, on the five-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. A producer and artivist (art + activist), Mack was named a 2022 CNN Champion for Change for his work with Music in Common.
A TED speaker and frequent lecturer, in 2023 Mack was awarded the Outstanding Contributions to Folk Music Award by the Southeast Regional Folk Alliance (SERFA).
