The Greatest   -  About the Episode

GREATEST PATRIOTIC SONGS Commercial country music was born in the early 1920s with World War I still fresh in the minds of all Americans. During World War II, country music spread around the globe when rural Americans took their music with them as they moved to industrial cities for wartime jobs and were shipped out to battle-torn countries around the world. Every generation since has been touched by war, and country music has been there to capture that tragedy and to lend patriotic support with a wide range of songs centered on American conflicts. CMT's Greatest Patriotic Songs spans American history and looks at music instigated by the tragedy of war. From the patriotic World War II classic, "There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere" and the inspirational song of this generation's greatest adversity, "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," to the angry beat of the war drum heard in "Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue," these songs tell the stories of soldiers abroad, comfort loved ones left behind and encourage a nation through its most turbulent times.