An examination of the anthem that was 'Everybody's Free'

Yes you do have to wear sunscreen, it turns out

1999 was a marvellous year. I was fifteen and had just been allowed to upgrade my hair from erratic orange streaks courtesy of Sun-In to something infinitely more chic (a more uniform blonde and orange, I never got rid of the orange entirely), my train tracks had bedded in and I no longer worried I would get stuck to a boy’s mouth if I engaged in some heavy snogging. Yes Y2K was on the horizon, with all the accompanying threats of world annihilation, but compared to the complete freak show that has been every moment since 2016, life was pretty sweet. It was only right then, that those of us alive in those glorious years should be gifted a song - nay an anthem - that encapsulated that hope, that energy, that carefree internetless (yeah it was around but good luck opening a website in under five minutes) life.

That song was, as you should already have guessed, ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen’ by director Baz Lurhmann. There’s a lot of confusion surrounding this song. Who originally gave the speech the music is set to? When did it actually come out? Why on earth did anyone think this was a good idea? (How dare you?) Allow me to answer these important questions. No it wasn’t written by Kurt Vonnegut, but by an American journalist called Mary Schmich who came up with it after seeing young women sunbathing without adequate protection and worrying about their skin. And it wasn’t a commencement speech, but an article written to sound like one. As to when it came out, well I remember it being included in the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack, but that seems to be a trick of my brain. What really happened: the song samples ‘Everybody’s Free (to feel good)’ by Rozalla, which Luhrmann used in Romeo + Juliet. In the film, this was sung by Quindon Tarver (who had the voice of an angel and sadly died much too young). By 1997, Lurhmann was working on a charity album featuring his favourite songs, and Everybody’s Free was one of his choices. When he read Schmich’s article, he decided to mash the Quindon Tarver version together with the text and the rest is history.

All clear? On we go. The song/speech had a chokehold on seemingly every girl I knew back then. We were graduating from one century and heading into another, and the lyrics spoke to those of us on the cusp of adulthood. I think some of us (me, it was me) took it too far. I was convinced that the lyrics contained all of the lessons I would ever need for adult life, that it would be my bible into adulthood. Could anything be more profound to an airhead teenager who mostly worried about whether I needed more Sun-In? Of course the year came and went and I didn’t listen to it again for decades, so clearly my attention span was spotty even then. Some people were more committed. I’ve heard it being read out at weddings, and I know you can buy various posters and prints which display the lyrics in a variety of pastel fonts, which I don’t fully endorse doing as an adult. But I digress. What I want to do now is look at the lyrics and see whether or not they hold up now I’m an adult. I will rank how seriously I took this advice out of ten. Let’s dive in!

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists,
whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own, meandering experience.
I will dispense this advice, now.

Ok we’re starting out with sunscreen, as expected. Not what I’d pick for my first piece of advice but it’s hard to argue with its importance. I didn’t listen to this advice as a teenager - an elderly Italian lady once shook her head when she saw me rubbing oil all over my body, clearly aware I was going to fry. But I’m very into factor 30 now, so go off Mary Schmich.