Switched on Pop - ICYMI: The 90s’ Most Unlikely Hit (with Baz Luhrmann)

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

In 1999 filmmaker Baz Luhrmann released the song “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen,” a 7-minute-long graduation speech set to downtempo electronic music. It was a highly unlikely hit that made its way across continents and eventually into the ears of a young Avery Trufelman via the album NOW That’s What I Call Music Volume 2. For over 20 years, Trufelman has applied the song’s advice to her daily life: “wear sunscreen… be nice to your siblings… do one thing every day that scares you.” This unusual song has left a lasting impression, and yet for Trufelman, it makes no sense that “The Sunscreen Song” was commercially successful. We investigate the song’s many architects — novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich and Baz Luhrmann himself — to unpack one of the internet’s first conspiracy theories that turned into Billboard’s greatest outlier.  We need your help. We are conducting a short audience survey to help plan for our future and hear from you. To participate, head to vox.com/podsurvey, and thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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about summer for seemingly two unrelated reasons. First, I'm a deep believer in the role of sunscreen. You should wear it.

every single day. And two, the filmmaker Baz Luhrman has a new movie out about Elvis. I spoke with him in 2020 about one of the most interesting songs of all time. Everybody's free to wear sunscreen. It's a bit of a musical mystery that unravels in a way that totally surprised me. I think you're going to really enjoy it. And I think you'll find an opportunity to correct me because I originally thought that there were no pop precedents for major pop songs that were primarily spoken. I think there's others. If you know them, let me know. And without any further or do. Here's the SunSreen song. Welcome to SwitchDun Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. This week, I received a request from a friend of the show to solve a musical malady. I'm Avery Truffleman.

I am a podcasters. You came to me with a musical mystery, if you will, and you need us to solve some important problem. So what is that song and what mystery do you need me to solve? usually if I'm by myself or on my bike or just feeling contemplative my mantra, my chant for my whole life has been everybody's free to wear sunscreen by Baz Luhrman.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you look back at photos of yourself, And we're calling away. You can't. And I have been listening to it since I was a little, little kid, like maybe nine.

And it was because when I was on a family vacation in Florida, my mom and dad brought me into, like, Virgin Records, and said, you can pick out one CD. And I was a kid, you know? I was like, I think I had three CDs in my collection. I didn't know what I liked. And my parents were like, oh, well, this, you know, seems like a good place to, just. start listening to music. And they held up now too. Now that's what I call music volume two. Now that's what I call music volume two. Which, you know, at the time, it was the most cutting edge modern like music mixtape. Lo and behold, it was actually like a phenomenal mix,

really, really great. And it ended, shockingly, with everybody's free to wear sunscreen by Boz Lerman, which is just barely a song. I mean, it's a poem. It's a poem to music. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead. Sometimes you're behind.

And it blew my mind. I mean, it was just so, in a weird way, it was almost a proto podcast, you know? And I hadn't listened to anything like that before. And I listened to it constantly. I listened to it all the time. I revisited it over and over again. and I basically have committed it to memory. And it's a nice little shorthand

because I just have this amazing cachet of wisdom that I can dispense at any time. I mean, someone will turn to me and be like, oh, I'm so stressed out, I'm so worried. And I can turn to them and be like, worry. But know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside. at 4 p.m. on some Idol Tuesday. You know, like, I just have it. It's there. It's in me. And it's such a strange and beautiful thing. Yeah.

I mean, I actually, too, remember this song very deeply because when I was in, I think, middle school, I heard it and there's a line in there that says something along the lines of, like, do something every day that scares you. Am I right? Yes, do one thing every day that scares you. I, like, lived by that for years.

No. Yeah. I think this song was low-key super meaningful. I mean, in a weird way, it's perfect that it was on now, too, because clearly it just meant a lot to a lot of people. But the question is like, why? So I know that part of the reason why this song made it into the world at that moment was that it rested on being this essential graduation piece. Yeah. Right.

So it was a graduation speech when people were graduating. It was sort of this moment of reflection. But I also don't understand it. Like it's, as you put it. it out there. Like, it's a proto podcast. It's fundamentally strange. I've never heard anything quite like it. So I guess what I want to know is, yeah, what do we need to unravel here? I mean, basically, it's this weird song that doesn't sound like anything else I had ever heard before and really doesn't sound like much since, honestly. I mean, my essential question in my life

is, why is this song in my head? Which goes back to why was this song on Now 2? Which goes back to why was this song so popular, which goes back to what is up with this song and how did it get made? Because it doesn't sound like anything else. So I called up my co-hosts, Nate, our resident musicologist, to see if there was anything musically that we could detect that might point to its popularity. I have like the vaguest memory of this from my childhood

and listening to it again brings back a flood of memories. and hearing it now, I think it is, as you said, kind of bogglingly unique, but there's also things that draw you into it. Like the way the vocal isn't quite in a rhythm, but it just floats in this way and arrives at these key moments that line up with the music that just hook you in so deeply. Floss. Don't waste your time on your time.

Jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead. Sometimes you're behind. The race is long. One of the most satisfying comes right at the beginning when out of this acapella kind of void, the narrator says, I will dispense this advice. Now. And this guitar strum kind of comes out of nowhere and the drums hit but it's like kind of welcoming you into this new reality of the song. There's something kind of trance like about it. It's these looping drum rhythms that go on and on and these kind of sonic events are kind of plopped down on top of that in this way that doesn't feel like it has a strong logic. but is responding to the spirit of this inspirational message.

This vocal over some trancy electronic-y music, to me, sounds wholly original. With your background and musical repertoire and pop history knowledge, can you think of any precedent or forbearer or even songs that might have followed in this tradition? Musically, what this brings to mind is jazz poetry. Gil Scott Heron. Yeah, exactly. The Revolution will not be televised. You will not be able to stay home, brother.

You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on stag and skip out for beer during commercials because the Revolution will not be televised. But in a Hot 100 context, I'm in the dark, is as to whether there's, precedence for this. You've got this sort of jazz beat thing going on. Sure. I can hear that. But that music's not very

popular. Like, I mean, it had its audience. It just not something that would have charted on the Hot 100. Right. And they're like album interludes like the miseducation of Lauren Hill. But this is a long song. Like sunscreen is long. Yeah. There's actually two versions of it. The original is actually seven minutes long.

They have a five minute radio edit that makes it on a now volume two. And Nate pointed me to the person that I think could actually help us try to understand and pinpoint where this fits in Billboard history. You would need to turn to Chris Milanfi, the chart whisperer for insight there. So I did just that. I am now recording. That's Chris Milanfi. He's the host of the Slate podcast hit parade. He knows the Billboard better than anyone I've ever met. Okay. I wanted to get his take on the song and what makes it a hit. I'm a little obsessed with that song.

I admire its pluck. I am charmed by it. I actually literally called Chris out of the blue. Like, no warning. And he starts quoting lines from the song just like you can, Avery. The moment where the speaker implores you to dance, dance like nobody's watching or whatever he or she says,

is quite moving. Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it, but in your own little. There are several moments. like that that are moving. Even some of the moments that are comical, like, you know, cherish how good you look right now. You don't realize it until you're much older, but you look, however much you think you look terrible, you look great right now. But trust me, in 20 years, you look back at photos of yourself, and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how

fabulous you really looked. That's meant to be comical, but it's also quite poignant. This song is so strange that it's embedded in his memory, of course, and like the master he is, he then starts racking his brain for the song's chart position, and he gets really close. In America, I believe it peaked in the mid-40s. I don't have my chart book in front of me. I'm going to guess like 46 or something like that. It actually made it to 45 on the Hot 100. So it did all right. It really did all right.

The fact that it got to 45 on Airplay alone for the period is quite impressive. Three years later when the retail single was all but dead, number 45 for an airplay-only single would not be impressive at all. But in 1999, it was quite impressive, especially for a song that is basically a speech over music, not even rap. It does not sound like anything else on the radio. I think this is an important point here. It's like the song was actually never released as a retail single, so you couldn't just go out and buy it in a store on its own. You had to get it as either part of the original Boslurman CD or on now volume two. And if it had been released as a single, it might have actually done even better.

But this song didn't break into the top 40. It was in that way kind of like a middling hit in its time. Even though it was incredibly important to you and so many others, it didn't quite bust into the everybody knows exactly what's going on here. So it wasn't on the radio. It's not like you could turn on top 40 and come across it. No, actually it was on the radio. And that's the only reason why it made it into the billboard. It got radio play.

is particularly curious, because I think this is the really important here, is that, like, there is nothing else like this on the radio, right? And it made me wonder, is like, is there any precedent in all of pop chart history that would have something like speeches over music? I would have to go back to the early rock era. I believe there have been speeches that have charted albums of speeches. I'm not sure there's been a single. I could be wrong. Dr. Martin Luther King has charted albums of speeches, for example. Obviously, comedy records, you know, which are just speech, have done very well in the charts, but that's a different animal. It turns out there's at least one other track that's like just kind of sort of like it.

Okay, I am remembering there is a predecessor. What's that? And it's in the early 70s. It's by a group that I believe called themselves Think. And the song is called Once You Understand. Do my new guitar? I joined a group. Son, there's a little bit more to life than joining the group playing the guitar.

It's very hippie era. It was a hit in like 70-71. The reason I know it exists is it was ranked in the book The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time by Jimmy Gooderman and O'Donnell. I think I YouTubeed it once, and if I recall correctly, Gutterman and O'Donnell are right. It's pretty appallingly bad. And it's such a curio and a relic of its peak hippie moment.

Okay, so this song, it peaked at number 53 on the Billboard Hot 100. 53, it didn't even do as well as a sunscreen, but it's responding to what's going on in the moment. This is the moment when things like, you know, day by day from Godspell, or I'd like to teach the world to sing the adapted Coca-Cola jingle, we're hitting the charts. Like anything that felt really groovy, man, and it plugged into the times, man, was hitting the charts.

So thinks when you understand is the closest I can come off the dome to a record that is a predecessor to, everybody's free to wear sunscreen. I don't know about you. I find this to be not a particularly satisfying answer. This is not sunscreen style material, right? No, and the thing that makes sunscreen so weird is that there is no refrain. I mean, he

says wear sunscreen at the beginning, and I know the extended cat has like a little song chorus that's a bit like shoehorned in there. But they're not even trying to get a rhythm. Like the background music changes, the thrust of the essay changes. It's constantly just propulsive and moving forward. It's not trying to be rhythmic. With this one really bad exception from nearly 30 years prior, the sunscreen song still seems to be a total anomaly. And yet somehow it makes it to the middle of the charts. And so I asked Chris, what should I do to continue this investigation? What clues could we look for to understand how it became a hit like no other?

You have to follow the path that it took. It is a moment. the most 90s songs that ever 90s. It fuses together. Early 90s house music, the career of Baz Luhrman, the first wave internet 1.0 version of the meme. It's got so much 90s stuff going on, all big together, which is what I love about it. Perhaps one of the most 90s things about the song is that it ends up on the now records. And those records were ubiquitous in the late 90s. That's how you picked one up. They were all over these Virgin Megastores. And the commercials were everywhere. Oh my gosh. All the time with the ridiculous graphics.

The wait is over. Now two has arrived. So I start looking into Now and it turns out that Now was actually originally started in the United Kingdom in 1980s by Richard Branson's Virgin label. And it only launches in the United States much later in 1998, just a year before you were. bought your first now record. And what's strange, though, is that now is supposed to highlight the biggest songs of the moment. And

as we pointed out, like the sunscreen song, while it was on radio, it didn't even break into the top 40. Right? So it just made me wonder, like, why in the world did it end up on the now volume two record, which is supposed to be a compilation of the biggest hits? And so I called up the guy who

would definitely know. From Jeff Moscoe and I am head of A and R for the now that's what I call music brand. Shut up. Yeah. So Jeff has picked all of the songs now since volume four in the U.S. The folks who made the first three albums, sadly, have all passed away. But Jeff gave me some insight into how these records work and how sunscreen might have

made it to your ears. Everything that has been done in the sequence and in the selection is deliberate. it really is about the feel. Think about this. For the people who are listening to it in their cars, and let's say you're someone, someone who has that album, they bought that album, they're excited.

They're playing for their kids on a car ride, a family car ride. There's a starting point and an end point. It's a journey. Anyone who makes records to tell you, and I'm talking about records, not a song, but an album, would tell you that it's meant to be deliberate.

It's meant to be a general. journey and experience. And the same thing is true for now. It's not a random bunch of songs thrown together. It's really thought out. You know, how does this feel best together? Okay. So here's the thing that doesn't make sense for me, Avery. Is that if this is supposed to be an album album, like where everything flows together. Right. Where in the world would you place the sunscreen song? Like, it doesn't fit anywhere. No, no. You know, weirdly enough, I kind of disagree with you there. I mean, yeah, the song is weird, but it did represent. this sort of liminal moment at the end of what we consider contemporary music.

Not that I had these thoughts when I was nine, but in hindsight, it does make sense that it was the finale of Now 2. Okay. So it actually fits on the CD for you. I don't think there's never been another now like it, though. Like there's never been that final cultural touchstone graduation speech kind of thing before or since. No, it's true. I remember I bought like Now 13 later and I was expecting to go on a journey with it and it wasn't

same thing. So it made me wonder, like, then how is Jeff going about and actually picking these songs that form this complete, perfect album? Well, it used to be easier in the sense that it was generally radio play. And you're really looking for the biggest song. And you're also looking for trajectory. So sometimes there were songs that we picked because we thought they would have the right trajectory and be big when the record came out. And sometimes that worked out. sometimes it didn't. But generally, you know, 90% are proven hits. Occasionally, though, and the sunscreen song was a good example, even though I was not doing A&R for the band at that time, my guess is that when that track was put on there, it was put on there because it had some

cultural relevance. It was sort of being passed around back in the day, you know, for the cool, you know, it's sort of hip and cool, and it was a unique song, and it had cultural, relevant. So it wasn't about his radio cachet. It was about his cultural cachet. That's so beautiful that they were kind of almost looking at this moment as like a Golden Voyager record, you know, that they

wanted to preserve that moment. And there's also something so loving about it that makes it so separate from say a Spotify algorithm. Just like, this is weird, but we think you'll like this. It's not like anything you've heard before. We're not just catering to

your taste and the taste of everything else on the album. I'm like very touched by that gesture of putting the song on the album. Well, yeah, it is equally that cultural cachet. But he also mentioned that trajectory is a part of how they choose their songs. And I spoke with Jeff afterwards over email a bit. And what he told me is that actually what had happened is that this song was a mega hit in the UK. Because the UK was released as a radio single. And it actually went to number one.

and here's the other wild thing here is that like there's a parallel universe of now records because there's the UK version and they're like number 104 right now but in the US we're only at 74 there's these like two different bean counters of what's popular at any given moment and it depends on which universe you live in it's like Fahrenheit and Celsius yeah yeah totally right and this Boz Lerman track was actually picked for the UK version of now and those folks said hey this thing is huge. It's got a great trajectory. You might want to put it on now volume two in the U.S. So I feel like we've answered your first question. How did this song, this kind of minor hit, which didn't quite break the top 40, end up on this compilation album. But I still feel like

there's a bigger question, which is like, how did this song ever come to be in the first place? Yeah. Remember how Chris Malmfie said that the sunscreen song is the most 90s song that ever 90s? And that part of its success, was that it was one of the original internet memes. Yeah. I think what resonated with people, and probably with you, Avery, were the words. It turns out that the lyrics weren't even written by Boz Lerman. Hmm.

Not at all. However, I was able to track down the original songwriter, if you will. My name is Mary Schmeke, and I am a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Mary is a Pulitzer Prize award-winning columnist who actually wrote the lyrics slash column that actually inspired the song. And she told me about how she came up with the piece. I write a column at the Chicago Tribune since 1992. I write three times a week.

This was in 1997 in May. And I was on my third column of the week. It was a Friday. I was walking into Tribune Tower, the newsroom. I had no idea what I was going to write about. And I was walking along Lake of Michigan. and I saw this young woman sunbathing. And I thought, oh, my God, I hope she's wearing sunscreen.

Because I didn't at that age, and it shows. So I think I was 42 then. And as I kept walking, I started thinking, I was laughing at myself. I just thought, I have reached an age where all I want to do is deliver advice to young people. And then I thought, well, it's graduation time. I could write a mock graduation speech. you know, it took me from like noon to 5 p.m. to write it and just a bunch of things popped into my head, along with a couple from a friend that I emailed and I said, hey, if you were writing a graduation speech, what would you say? And she wrote back and she said, I'd say, be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

And so in that one afternoon, before it was ever a song, Mary writes her column and publishes it. I mean, its first life was, as a newspaper column, that appeared on June 1, 1997 in the Chicago Tribune on the front of the metro section where my column appears. I got a bunch of nice snail mail about it because, I mean, part of the story of this song speech is that it arrived in the early days of the Internet. So very few people had, well, people were just getting email. So most of the response I got to it was snail mail. I feel like in comparison to the onslaught of social media disinformation, that we get today, the early days of internet email must feel quaint. Yeah.

But do you remember like chain letters and early email memes, right? Yeah, no, it's like memes were kind of these little gifts that got passed around, you know? Things did go viral, but in this very like tender way. Yeah, well, it turns out that Mary's article becomes one of these first early internet conspiracies, if you will. And then a couple of months later, I started getting email. from people saying something very strange has happened to me. I just got an email with a column of yours that I read in the Tribune a couple of months ago. But now it says that it was Kurt Vonnegut's graduation address to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

So Kurt Vonnegut's, of course, one of the most acclaimed authors of the time. He's most famous for his book, Slaughterhouse Five. He was known as a commentator. and it seemed reasonable that Vonnegut could have written the piece. And I remember sitting there and looking at these emails because there were several of them all of a sudden and laughing out loud and just thinking, what? For about 15 minutes, I thought it was funny.

And then a guy also with journalists wrote me. He had gotten it, I think, from his sister in Denver. And he said, you know you have a problem here, don't you? It looks like you plagiarized Kurt Vonnegut. And that just took my breath away. And I had a moment where I thought, oh, my God, did I? You know, because you hear about people who plagiarized and they say, oh, I was in some black hole.

I don't know what happened. And then, you know, so I went through, you know, like a nanosecond of mental review and realized that, no, these are the exact circumstances under which I wrote that column. but I realized I did have a problem journalistically that people were going to start accusing me of stealing something. So that very day, I started

trying to find Kurt Vonnegut. So she starts by picking up the only clue that's left on the email chain. She calls MIT. Oh. Yeah, right? It makes sense. He supposedly gave us graduate decision speech at MIT. MIT's a bust.

Vonnegut didn't deliver the commencement speech that year. It was Kofi Annan. And MIT doesn't have Vonnegut. It's phone number, so she tries his publisher. That's a bust. Can't reach him. Calls a book reviewer, another dead end. But she finally finds her way to Kurt.

And then I called one of the Tribune Correspondents in New York, who was very plugged into people. She somehow found a phone number for Curvonaget. And I was so nervous, and I called him, and he picked up. And I said, hi, I'm Mr. Vonnegut. my name is Mary Schmeek, and I proceeded to explain. And he just barked a laugh, and he went, oh, my God, it's you. And then he proceeded to tell me that he, too, had been bombarded by all of these people, thinking that he'd written this, including his wife, who said,

honey, I didn't know you gave the graduation speech at MIT. And, of course, he had no idea what was going on. I at least knew what those words were. He didn't. She clears the whole thing up, cleans up the misattribution, and totally puts the internet meme to rest. It's like every step of this has been hallucinatory to me

and hilarious, except when it's just been weird. And it's about to get one step weirder for Mary. Oh, I don't know, a few weeks later, I think. I get another voicemail. and it's a guy with an Australian accent. I can't do an Australian accent, but he says, you know, Mary, this is,

my name is Bas Lurman. I'm a movie maker in Australia. And he explained that he had gotten a hold of this piece, and then he said, in a very movie maker phrase, I have an idea for the material. What the filmmaker Baz Lerman does with the material when we come back. Maria, you have a podcast now,

and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step? as a podcaster. Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready? Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey.

Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.

But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually.

Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. So I called up Baz Luhrman to figure out why in the world would he want to set this column slash meme to music. Hi, I'm Baz Luhrman and I am a writer and producer. and director and occasional music producer. Bosz, seriously, clearly loves telling this story. It's one that I feel like you just can't make up. Because Mary's side of the details, I think, are utterly wonderful. Like, it's all kismet.

Boss's side are equally bizarre. Like, this song just shouldn't have happened. But here's how he tells it. Although I'm known for films, like music has always been this great passion of mine. You know, I started in opera. music theater and I was always doing moving pictures, but I was always into music. Okay, so this is the era where Boz is creating the modern Romeo and Juliet film featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Dane's. I'm sure you remember it. Romeo plus Juliet, yes.

My pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. Well, then, dear saint, let lips do with hands do. They pray, grant thou. So he's working with an assistant on this film, this guy named Anton Monstead. and they start scheming about this love for music. You know, Boz loved musicals, and he's in the early stage of dreaming up Moulin Rouge. He wants to reinvent the modern musical. But he wanted to find a way to get his hands dirty in music production and finds an opportunity to release some music.

There was some issues in Australia, and I thought, why don't I make this little charity album? And what I'll do, I'll call it something for everybody, which is take a lot of my pre-existing music from everything up to Romeo and Juliet, because that's the last film I'd made. and, you know, either remix it or reinterpret it or have a cover done of it, just to make this charity album. And we're in the middle of doing it.

And at that stage, Anton, who's considerably younger than I am, comes to me and who goes, you know, there's this speech on this thing called, it was a new invention called the World Wide Web. And I was going to be working with Kurt Vonnegut. And the idea I was going to do an opera with him on Slaughterhouse Five. And I had actually met Kurt. I'd just been exchanging with him. And it was going to be in Berlin. I thought, well, this will be amazing.

I'll go give up between movies. I'll go and do an opera. And I'll do it with Kirk Vonnegut. And he said, Kurt Vonnegut's written this amazing commencement speech, and it's on the worldwide web. Okay, so obviously, Baz and Anton have been duped. Yeah. And we read it.

And I thought, yeah, gee, wow, Kurt, absolutely what? That's got to be the greatest commencement speech. I mean, that is so good. I thought, why don't we get Kurt to record it? So it turns out when we contact, I think actually Kirk's wife, that it's a hoax, and he never wrote it. So it's probably the first internet hoax, really. So Boz discovers that that, in fact, of course, Mary, not Kurt, had written this piece, but it doesn't deter him. I mean, in the end, her observations, you know, do one thing every day that scares you, you know.

those ideas in the commencement speech, you know, were relevant and meaningful and touched everyone. So Boss decides he's going to forge ahead anyway, gets Mary in the Tribune's permission to record the article, and then he mashes it up with music from a song that he's done for the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack called Everybody's Free. Oh. So I thought, well, look, why don't we just record it as a spoken word piece over Everybody's Free? Now, Everybody's Free was a dance club song that was huge in the 80s in England. And we reinterpreted it with Nellie Hooper with actually the Cambridge Kings Boys Choir with a really gifted young singer then in Romeo and Julia who's in the film.

And if you've seen the film when they get married, there's this young fellow called Quindentava. And honestly, he was only about 13, but he had such a job. gigantic voice and so gifted. Brother and sister together we'll make it through. It will take you. So the idea was, well, what if we put the speech over that choir and do it with beats?

And I was then also working with a kind of beatmaster guy called Josh Abrams. So Anton and I got with Josh in his grandmother's house in Melbourne. Okay, so we'll get this. Buzz and Anton and Josh's grandmother's basement.

mash up everybody's free from the soundtrack from his hit film Romeo and Juliet, which is in itself a cover of a popular 80s dance song and then doubles down on the conspiracy theory about Vonnegut. Long straight short, I thought, well, how do we make the voice sound like it is Kurt Vonnegut? And there was a voice impersonator who was absolutely brilliant called Lee Perry. And he was in Australia. And he could like do anyone. We got him to record it as if it was Kurt. And it was sort of an Eastern Seaboard voice, ladies and gentlemen of the class of, you know,

forgive my bad impression, of I think it might have been, now I'm going to get this wrong, but it might have been 94 or 96, something like that. Boss has got the story straight, but he's not great on dates. It was the class of 1997, of course. Yeah. I can't remember the very first one we did.

And so we record the VO. We spent a lot of time really matching it up. And at the time, he finished it. I went like, gee, it was 90, let's say 96. I said, what if, what if, what if, what if no one listens to this till 97? You know, it's, it's, it's commencement speech. I said, well, let's do 97. So he did no idea. I said, look, do it. And we got to like 2000, thinking no one will ever want to listen to this after 2000. And so we used to re-release it because it was always sort of charting. No joke. So they actually have a 1997 version. Oh my God. They have a 1999 version. and I couldn't find any others, but they did actually release it as recently as 2007. What? They just update that beginning little part so that, you know, it kind of like plays into the guaranteed success of this being an ongoing graduation meaning helping it find its audience. Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2007.

So, Paa's just like playing on meme, on meme, on meme. He's just mashing it all together. But that doesn't guarantee its success, right? I wanted to know how he went from this basement mixtape to mainstream recognition. And honestly, it turns out that it really almost was never heard. I go down to the local radio station, which was Triple J, it was called. And I played it to them. And a guy who ran, who programmed the station went,

there is nothing on here that we could possibly play. That's it, terrible. Well, this is too theatrical and everything's too long. and it's who cares and it's all too weird. So I went, oh, not so much for that. I knew a guy who ran the arts program late at night, like 12 o'clock at night. So I said, look, why don't I come down and talk about my new projects I'm doing? And he said, oh, yeah, come on now.

And I said, but you've got to play one song. So he said, yeah, and he said, which one? I said, why don't you play this seven-minute one? Because it was the longest one on the album. And I knew it probably will never get played again. So he puts it on. and as we're playing and we're talking, there's like one guy on the switchboard.

There are two people in the radio station. And the guy on the switchboard is like tapping on the glass. And he's looking down. And literally like in the movies, the switchboard is lighting up with all these like incoming calls. So the next morning, they put it on the radio. They played on that triple J.

By the end of the week, it was the number one record in Australia on every single platform. Like the movie director has his movie moment. Yeah. Being a music producer. That's so well put. Yeah, totally.

I mean, it's magical to imagine what it would feel like driving down the road in Melbourne and then turning on the radio and hearing this like otherworldly sort of space transmission. That must have been so incredible. So the song becomes this hit in Australia, but it still hasn't, was it, crossed the pond? I don't know what it is to go from Australia. to Los Angeles. I don't know. But something like that? Okay. So the next step is that like it needs to break out in the U.S. So I go to Los Angeles the next week because that'd be in LA. And you know morning becomes eclectic? I don't know if that's still on. You've ever heard of that? I listen every morning. I live in Los Angeles. Oh, it's still on? Oh, it is the best program

in radio in the United States. Like I have to admit, that's obviously definitely my subjective experience, but I love my local public radio station, KCRW, and have honestly some of the best new music anywhere, in my opinion. So Baz goes on KCRW. There was this great DJ on it who I used to listen to every time I went to L.A. And I did the same thing. But I said, look, you know, I'm, I hardly, you know, I don't often get out there and do PR and stuff and talk. I said, I'd like to come on to go on your projects. I did. But you have to play one song. And I go on. He plays the song exactly the same thing happens. Suddenly, the record is everywhere in the U.S.

it gets picked up by late night TV. Jay Leno heard it and Jay went, hey, I think he thought maybe Lee was Lee Scratch Perry. Another important misunderstanding. Scratch Perry is a giant reggae star. I says, no, actually Lee, Lee is this great voiceover artist. And so Jay Leno got a choir and flew Lee Perry, the voiceover artist from Australia, and put him on the Jay Leno show.

and he performed it live on Jay Leno. Read the directions. If you don't follow them, do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. And then we recorded it in other languages. Yeah, they actually record international versions of the song. I don't know if you've ever heard the German.

No. Maybe they're married, maybe also not. So you think they Kind of Maybe even Maybe they're So you think that this would be it

Right? Like goes on late night It gets picked up In a Danny DeVito movie actually What? What movie? The 2000 film The Big Kahuna

As the end credits Makes sense To the end of the mixtape Totally and also very 90s To have like credit song You probably also remember That Chris Rock famously parodied the song

In his track Called No Sex in the Champagne Room Yeah Oh my God Of course that's a parody. What? I didn't put two and two together. Ladies and gentlemen, of the GED class of 1999,

I have one piece of advice for you. No matter what a stripper tells you, there's no sex in the champagne room. I even saw it recently referenced on an SNL monologue. Wait, wait, you mean the one where Alec Baldwin is imitating Trump? If you don't understand something, just call it stupid, never wear sunscreen. But also, and it's so interesting, of course, like the thread goes on and on, thinking of like Wycleft John sampling, no sex in the champagne room,

or, like, referencing it in his song. Just like the tendrils of this thing just go like on and on and on. But anyway. Exactly. But before it's going to make its way on to now vol, Volume 2, it first had to hop properly across the pond and go from the US to the British audience. It had not been released in England, and by then the buzz had grown so big that people were saying, where will it chart? And it arrived in England at number one.

And that kind of brings us full circle. The song was such a big hit as a single in the UK that it was a candidate for now Volume 2 in the US. And it makes its way into your life, Avery. you've been heeding its sound wisdom for over 20 years. Yeah. Given the long life of everybody's free, I asked Baz what it meant for him all these years later. This song has a legacy unlike any other.

Like I think it's totally inappropriate to call it a one-hit wonder. It is an iconoclastic work. There has been no song before it or since that is anything like this. How do you feel about that legacy? When you mentioned that you were moved by it, I was moved by it. When I read those words like something, when it says, you know, maybe you're ahead, maybe behind, but in the end, the race is with yourself, you know? Like, you know, I mean, don't read beauty magazines.

They'll only make you feel ugly. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. I still read fashion magazines, right? But the truth is that it is full of wisdom. And I heard stories, real stories. of, because there was quite a to-do around it when it first came out that some mother or young mother might be driving along

and it would come on the radio and some people would just pull over their car and just start weeping. You're not the first person who said it actually affected their life. So, you know, how I feel about it is that in a world that is difficult to make anything of use. If you make anything

and it touches you or is helpful or uplifts you or moves you or somehow gets you through the day even, then you feel useful. And I don't want to be glib by saying, oh, I feel useful. But you know you feel like you haven't actually wasted your time. Because we live in a world in terms of everything in the physical world, but in culture as well where there is just so much stuff. And, you know, it's good when something comes along that just isn't another piece of stuff, you know.

So what do you think? Mystery solved? Have we answered your questions? Oh, my God. Yeah, entirely. I mean, there's something that's so heart-acheingly earnest about this song. I mean, it's just advice. It's raw advice transfer.

And it's not necessarily trying too hard to be poetic or strange or weird. It's so raw and it's so open that, of course, it could only be made by accident. It's almost egosless. And I love that that resonates with so many people. It's kind of beautiful when art can be easy. Hmm. It was really, really profound. And even the fact that it was lovingly selected by now too.

I was ready for something along the lines to not be beautiful and magical and thoughtful. Can I give one thing I'm disappointed about? Yeah. I just don't understand why the voice actor had to be Vonnegut-e. Because Mary does get left out of this. And it does matter whose perspective the writing comes from. the writing comes from. Of course, now I'm like, well, as a kid, I think that would have changed the way I heard it if it was the voice of a woman in her 40s. But then again, maybe that's the

only way people could listen. When I spoke with Mary, she actually told me about how there was this BBC documentary about the sunscreen song, and they actually re-record it with her as the voiceover. No way. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself. I recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. And she got all of these letters.

Here's what she said. Let me just add one more thing. Please. Please. Please. I have heard from so many women who were, you know, probably your age when they first heard it, you know, who are, so like in their 30s or 40s now, who have said, oh, my God, I'm so glad to know a woman wrote that. So that somehow they, they, they, they hear it, you know,

they'll say, you know, I liked it before, but when I, when I know that it came from the mind of a woman, I hear it differently. And I just, that's just an interesting little perception to me. Does it matter, really? There is just more ire. about women's voices. They're taken less seriously for vocal fry and upspeak and all these verbal tics that by and large, authoritative male voices are able to get away with.

But also in some way, I like the way she framed that. It's almost like early female authors in the 1800s taking on male pen names. Right. I think maybe that's one of the only ways it could have reached the wide audience it did and had the success it had

was through this authoritative, Vonnegutty voice. And maybe that's just the only way it could have happened. And also for a lot of people that it probably was playing into hoax that they heard about, right? It's just like it's the mashup of those memes. But I hear you.

I think it's really important. And I wanted to ask both Baz and Mary if they were to write the song today, how would they update the lyrics? They will be experiencing a graduation like no other. And from,

all of the negative sides to that, it will be as if it happened during a time of great global cataclysm. And I really believe in the human spirit, and particularly the young and when they are embarking on their life journey. And I believe in their ability that adversity or difficulty or change or the world saying it's not going to be easy can. will and should bring out a deeper spirit and a deeper desire to overcome. I really appreciated what Boz had to say, but given what you were sharing earlier, I think it's really important to give the original author, Mary, the last words and advice on how she would update sunscreen for the current class.

You know, if I were to write this today, I would write something that would have some of these ideas in it, but it would sound very different. rise out of their time. Here's the one thing I think I regret not having embedded in that is the need for all of us to reach outside ourselves, to give something beyond what we give to ourselves and just to the people we love, you know, to think bigger, working for your community. I wish I'd sought to embed something about that. Oh my God. I'm like, I'm actually I'm very moved by that but it's so interesting that that's her takeaway

because that is in this whole story everything you've described to me the process of making it the way the song goes out in the world that is what the song did like the medium is the message the song has been a uniting universal gift outside of any one individual

you know I guess it's like the most beautiful thing a song can possibly do Yeah. And especially like with these words. So it's interesting. I mean, I see why she would regret not overtly saying it, but she didn't not say it. Or at least it was able to be said in the mythical process of this column becoming a pop song. Switched on Pop is produced by Bridget Armstrong, Megan Lubin, Nate Sloan, and me, Charlie Harding. Braddon McFarlane edits mixes and masters the show. Iris Gottlieb is our illustrator. Abby Bar to social media, Nashak Kerwa and Liz Nelson are our executive producers for a member of the Vox. Media Podcast Network. I want to say thank you to Avery Troupleman for bringing me this really fun story and an extra big shout out to Chris Malanfi, who chatted with me for hours about all

of the background of this song. I really recommend that you check out his podcast Hit Parade. You can catch Switched on Pop on social media at Switched on Pop. We'd love to chat with you and get ideas there. We'll see you next Tuesday to talk Gaga and thanks for listening. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of with the form of pay with a better

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