The Lore Of, Chop Suey By System Of A Down:

Chop Suey Lore:

In the days after 9/11, US media conglomerate Clear Channel sent an internal memo to each of the 1,100 radio stations it owned. It included a list of more than 160 ‘lyrically questionable’ songs that programmers and DJs might want to consider not playing in the wake of the attack on the Twin Towers.


Drowning Pool’s Bodies was on the list, as was AC/DC’s Shot Down In Flames, every single Rage Against The Machine song and – what?!? – Alanis Morissette’s Ironic. Also in there was System Of A Down’s Chop Suey!, the first single from the LA band’s second album, Toxicity, which had been released that very week. The lines ‘I don’t think you trust in my self-righteous suicide/I cry when angels deserve to die’ were deemed too much for post-9/11 America to take, and the song was quietly pulled from the Clear Channel network.

“In music, that’s a badge of honour,” says System guitarist Daron Malakian. “So many great rock bands have been banned. It’s almost like you’re not part of the cool group if you’re not banned once or twice. I think it made the song more popular.”

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Home Features Metal Hammer
The Story Behind The Song: System Of A Down’s Chop Suey!
By Dave Everley( Metal Hammer ) published April 01, 2021
Bans, conspiracy theories and the shadow of 9/11 – System Of A Down’s Daron Malakian looks back on the most popular metal song of the 21st century

Our fans thought, ‘Hey, these guys are prophets, they’re saying things that hadn’t happened yet.’

Daron Malakian
Drowning Pool’s Bodies was on the list, as was AC/DC’s Shot Down In Flames, every single Rage Against The Machine song and – what?!? – Alanis Morissette’s Ironic. Also in there was System Of A Down’s Chop Suey!, the first single from the LA band’s second album, Toxicity, which had been released that very week. The lines ‘I don’t think you trust in my self-righteous suicide/I cry when angels deserve to die’ were deemed too much for post-9/11 America to take, and the song was quietly pulled from the Clear Channel network.

“In music, that’s a badge of honour,” says System guitarist Daron Malakian. “So many great rock bands have been banned. It’s almost like you’re not part of the cool group if you’re not banned once or twice. I think it made the song more popular.”

He’s wrong, strictly speaking. Chop Suey! wasn’t officially banned, but the edict could have stopped System’s rapid career upswing dead in its tracks. Instead, it barely dented the song’s momentum. Alternately jarring, soothing, bullish and confusing, it reflected the shattered mirror that was America’s psyche at that precise moment – the perfect soundtrack to those disorientating times.

Today, Chop Suey! stands as System Of Down’s most famous song, and a 21st-century metal landmark. Its 600 million-plus Spotify plays are greater than any single Metallica song and bigger than the two most popular Slipknot songs combined. Last year it notched up one billion YouTube views – the first metal song to pass that figure, give or take Linkin Park’s In The End.

“When I wrote it, I did not think Chop Suey! was gonna be any different to any of our other songs,” says Daron. “But that was the one that pushed open the door for us.”

People connected to Chop Suey! in the period immediately before, during and after 9/11. And almost 20 years on, they haven’t stopped connecting to it


Spotify link to Chop Suey: https://open.spotify.com/track/2DlHlPMa4M17kufBvI2lEN