The Pat Benatar Song That Took on New Meaning After 9/11

Pat Benatar‘s “Invincible” — a Top 10 hit that was the theme song for The Legend of Billie Jean as well as the lead single from Benatar’s Seven the Hard Way album — turns 40 this year. But the song’s greatest significance for the singer may have come 16 years after its release.

Benatar and husband Neil Giraldo and their band were scheduled to perform at an outdoor venue in California’s Napa Valley on Sept. 11, 2001, the day of airplane terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. “I was literally having a heart attack,” Benatar recalls to UCR via Zoom from her home in California. “I didn’t know how I was gonna go out there (to perform). I mean, I grew up in New York. I watched (the World Trade Center) being built. It was hideous.

“And the promoter was like, ‘You have to play. Everybody’s calling. They want to come. They want to be together.’ I was like, ‘Don’t make me do this,’ and then you’re trying to decide, going through your head, ‘What song is gonna be appropriate?’ I told (the crowd) before we started that we may have to stop, because if we start a song and it feels creepy and weird, I’m not gonna finish it.”

Benatar chose to start the night with “America the Beautiful,” then roared into a rendition of “Invincible” that was more charged than usual. “It was nuts,” she recalls. “I always sang it as a song of empowerment, but this took on a whole other life that night, and they went berserk. Everyone was sobbing. They had sheets that said ‘God Bless America’ on them, and it was such a moment ’cause I as just shaking form the emotion of being afraid I couldn’t do it. It was like the lights went on and the words were new, like it was the first time I ever sang it. It wasn’t, of course, but it had such an impact on (the crowd), and us.”

Watch Pat Benatar Perform ‘Invincible’

The experience also gave birth to Benatar’s song “Christmas in America,” which — she wrote in her 2010 memoir, Between a Heart and a Rock Place — was inspired when one audience member asked “‘How are we gonna have Christmas? How will anyone feel like celebrating?’…’Oh, we’re gonna have Christmas,’ I shouted back. ‘We’re gonna do what we do best; pick ourselves up and move forward. We are going to have Christmas!'” She began writing the song back in her hotel room that night and recorded it for release in time for the holiday.

As for “Invincible,” Benatar notes that “it has served so many situations. It’s always had that kind of sentiment behind it, and, y’know, things are crazy right now; when I sing it now, it’s pretty militant. I’m like, ‘Listen to this!'” And it’s clearly become her own even though it was written by others (Simon Climie and Holly Knight). “Whenever I was choosing a song that wasn’t written by us, it was really important that the sentiment was something I would have written about had I thought of it,” Benatar explains. “So it said everything I wanted to say, about strength and standing up and never giving up, that kind of thing.”

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo Have Big Future Plans

As “Invincible” turns 40, Benatar and Giraldo are well-immersed in current projects. The two have just published their first children’s book, My Grandma and Grandpa Rock!, inspired by their own three grandchildren. Benatar says that she now has three more children’s book ideas in motion and is also working on retooling Invincible, the stage musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet that opened during late 2022 and has moved its base of operations to New York.

Giraldo has three of his own albums and two books in various stages of completion, and he recently told Billboard that he has “a crazy idea” for a new album with Benatar, which he described as “nothing like you’d expect.” It would be their first new recording since 2020 and their first new album since Go in 2003.