After the Horror, Radio Stations Pull Some Songs —

Clear Channel Communications, the Texas-based company that owns about 1,170 radio stations nationwide, has circulated a list of 150 songs and asked its stations to avoid playing them because of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Some listed songs would be insensitive to play right now, such as the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” and Soundgarden’s “Blow Up the Outside World,” but other choices, critics and musicians say, are less explicable because they have little literal connection to the tragedies.

These include “Ticket to Ride” by the Beatles, “On Broadway” by the Drifters and “Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John. Even odder, some songs on the list are patriotic, like Neil Diamond’s “America.” Others speak of universal optimism, like Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” and others are emotional but hopeful songs that could help people grieve, like “Imagine” by John Lennon, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel, “Peace Train” by Cat Stevens and “A World Without Love” by Peter and Gordon. New York Times