Paul's SONG OF THE YEAR 2003: "Everyone Deserves Music" by Michael Franti & Spearhead Jul 02 '05    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music Revelation [Digipak] by Journey From $12 Machine Gun Etiquette by The Damned From $40 The Bottom Line In which the author waves his hands in the air like he just don't care. Michael Franti has never really been known to have a light touch. As the driving force behind such underground hip-hoppers as The Beatnigs and Disposable Heroes of Hip-Hoprisy, and even on his mellower work with Spearhead, he's never been subtle about where he stands... on anything. The group's album Stay Human was an organic concept record centered on the injustice inherent in the death penalty. That album's lead single "Rock the Nation", was a militant exhortation to a truly-pro-life army to "take over television and radio stations" and deliver their truth. "Bomb! Bomb! The truth shall come! Give the corporations some complication!" By the release of the band's fourth record Everyone Deserves Music in 2003, Franti had tweaked his message ever-so-slightly, offering up a kinder, gentler Spearhead for a public still shell-shocked from 9/11 and deluged by daily reports of suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, and "new" videotapes from terrorists still at large, from parts of the world many of us hadn't even considered before that sunny Tuesday morning. "We can bomb the world to pieces," he sang, "but we can't bomb it into peace." The album Everyone Deserves Music was centered around the idea that the most effective way to combat the evils in this world is to create greater goods. A little naive, maybe. A little hippy-dippy even, an impractical, feel-good ultra-liberal message readily dismissable by men in marble hallways and expensive suits as mindless, misguided and, as Jeff Gannon might say, divorced from reality (and certainly he would know a thing or two on the subject). But I don't know. There might be something to it. In French-Algerian novelist Yasmina Khadra's recent book The Swallows of Kabul, a Taliban jailer meditates on the lack of music in his city, and how the place feels poorer, harsher, and less human for it; and he questions his faith in a religion that would forcibly take something like music away. - - - - - At its heart, "Everyone Deserves Music" is an old-school party jam, a live-live-all-the-way-live, throw-your-hands-in-the-air celebration the likes of which we've rarely seen since the Kool and the Gang dancefloor regime of the early 1980s. But it's just as political, just as militant as any of Franti's most extreme protest raps. It's the politics of dancing, yes, and the politics of oooooh, feeling good, but there's a sneaky trick in the title. Everyone deserves music. At a time when government officials in high places may or may not have been seeking ways to justify (or at least legally absolve ourselves of) the ongoing, as yet unexposed torture and systematic dehumanization of our war prisoners, this holy, holy, holy party jam came with a radical reassurance, worthy of Christ himself: Even our worst enemies, they deserve music. Not just for the pleasure of it, not just for the dancing and comfort, compassion and sweetness of it (and this song overflows with dancing and comfort, compassion and sweetness), but for the humanity music bestows upon its listener. It overflows with this too: the ability to sing even in our darkest moments. Even in prison cells. Everyone deserves music. But Franti delivers this most unswallowable of messages without even mentioning politics, war, or current events. Instead, he offers vignettes of lives teetering on the edge of desperation, not just the obvious teenage-addict-on-the-street types, but the day-to-day folks suffering a more insidious type of imprisonment, troubling over an empty refrigerator, and the balance on their ATM receipts. Everyone deserves music. There's something grand and redemptive and damn-near infinite about the song, the simplicity and repitition of the message - even our worst enemies, Lord - and when the song recovers its chorus after a false stop, it feels like one fantastic rock n' roll hallelujah: Everyone deserves music, sweet music. Everyone. No exceptions. - - - - - SONG LYRICS: Everyone deserves music, sweet music Everyone deserves music, sweet music Seven in the morn' step on the floor Walk into the kitchen and you open the door There ain't much left in the bottle of juice Because the seeds that you planted never reproduced Computer still runnin' But your mind has crashed Because the plans that you made never came to pass Now you reconizin' the times is hard When you tryin' to take a bite out of your ATM card Everyone deserves music, sweet music Everyone deserves music, sweet music Even our worst enemies Lord, they deserves music, music Even the quiet ones in our family, they deserve music Ginny's home life wouldn't stabilize At the age of 15 learned to drink and drive No one ever could seem to empathize Makin' babies in the back seat on tranquilizers Papa never was much a rolling stone see He just like to sit and drink alone Mama always tried to do the best she could She would work all day and then come home to cook but We all vain, we all strange We all drained, we all love to just complain But nobody wants to seem to get along, ya see We got shame, we got pain We got blame, we all a little bit insane So that's why I sing this song ya know because Everyone deserves music, sweet music Everyone deserves music, sweet music Even our worst enemies Lord, they deserves music, music Even the quiet ones in our family, they deserve music So I pray for them and I'll play for them So I pray for them and I'll play for them We all vain, we all strange We all drained, we all love to just complain But nobody wants to seem to get along, ya see We got shame, we got pain We got blame, we all a little bit insane So that's why I sing this song ya know because Everyone deserves music, sweet music Everyone deserves music, sweet music Even our worst enemies Lord, they deserves music, music Even the quiet ones in our family, they deserve music - - - - - SONG CREDITS: Written by Michael Franti / Dave Shul / Carl Young Produced by Michael Franti Performed by Michael Franti & Spearhead, 2004 Michael Franti: vocals, guitar, programming Carl Young: bass, keyboards Dave Shul: guitar Manas Itene: drums RadioActive: rhymes, beatbox Bob Crawford: keyboards Roberto Quintana: percussion LZ Love Phoenix: background vocals - - - - - CHART INFO: Didn't chart. - - - - - ALBUM REVIEW: Michael Franti & Spearhead - Everyone Deserves Music (2003) - - - - - OTHER IMPORTANT (TO PAUL) SONGS OF 2003: "Hey Ya" by Outkast "Nothing Fails" by Madonna "Out of Time" by Blur "If She Wants Me" by Belle & Sebastian "Landslide Baby" by Beulah

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