Ummmm…. 1999 might not be a top-tier year from a musical standpoint, but it’s certainly turning into one of my favourite years to write about…
Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen), by Baz Luhrmann (his 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 6th – 13th June 1999
We’ve pinged from pop-punk, to new wave, to bubblegum, to garage, with plenty of boyband pap in between, to this… This monologue on life from an Australian film director. It is a word-for-word recital of an imagined graduation speech, written by columnist Mary Schmich for the Chicago Tribune in 1997, that had gained fame through that most late-nineties of ways: as a viral email.
The voice on the record is Australian voice actor Lee Perry, who dispenses Schmich’s pearls of wisdom with a likeably dry authority. Some are practical (Floss! Stretch!), while some are fanciful (Maybe you’ll divorce at forty, Maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken at your 75th wedding anniversary…). Some are funny (Read the directions, Even if you don’t follow them…), and some are touching (Get to know your parents, You never know when they’ll be gone for good…) All of it is bookended by the one and only piece of advice that has been proven by scientists: Wear sunscreen!
The backing track is the choral version of a dance hit from 1991, which also lends the record its title, Rozalla’s ‘Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)’, a song Luhrmann had previously used in ‘Romeo + Juliet’. It’s got a nice laid-back, trip-hop, surf-rock feel to it. In extended mixes, a new version of the chorus from the Rozalla original is included, although the single mix skips any singing and makes this a purely spoken-word #1, to rank alongside Telly Savalas and J.J. Barrie.
Although I have an aversion anything labelled as ‘self-help’, there is something appealing about this weird, post-modern single. It’s the sort of thing Andy Warhol might have released, had he had a pop music career. Like a lot of Lurhmann’s work, it’s not half as deep as it thinks it is. Some of the lyrics are downright trite, live laugh love level bullshit (Do one thing every day that scares you…), but there are a couple of verses that verge on the profound. My favourites are the lines on the power of youth in the first verse, and on nostalgia towards the end: Advice is a form of nostalgia, Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, And recycling it for more than it’s worth…
I think it also appeals because it’s now twenty-five years old, and is itself a reminder of a simpler time. A time when emails went viral, when newspapers would bother publishing a piece of whimsy like this, and when a pop record this innovative could make the top of the charts. Plus, spend five minutes scrolling through Instagram today, and you’ll be bombarded with an avalanche of crappy, pop-psychology memes with captions ten times more glib and cheesy than this record. (Oops, there’s me falling into nostalgia’s sneaky trap already…)
Baz Luhrmann may have had a far more prolific career as a director, but this isn’t the only time that he has had a say in the world of music. Tracks from the soundtracks of his movies, from ‘Romeo + Juliet’, to ‘Moulin Rouge’, to ‘Elvis’, have all made the upper reaches of the singles charts, including a soon to come number one.
As with some of our more left-field recent chart-toppers (Mr. Oizo and Spacedust spring immediately to mind) I’m more in the ‘Whyyyyy?’ than the ‘Yayyyyy!’ camp with this record, but it makes for a fun curio. And as a fair-skinned person living in a hot climate, I can attest: Trust him on the sunscreen!
The single mix:
The extended version, with a sung chorus:
The UK Number Ones Blog 
This was a great single, I love the Rozalla backbone original and I love the quirky, amusing and occasionally moving lyrics. There are some truisms in amongst this, and the older one gets the more true they seem. The bit about your parents rang true to me 25 years ago, and now that mum and dad are gone I’m glad I got to spend time with them right to the end, on annual holidays, at home, and as carer and co-carer for a decade – it doesn’t stop it being traumatic, but there are less regrets than there might have been. But above all, and I can personally vouch for this, WEAR SUNSCREEN! Once you’re in bed shaking uncontrollably as your skin blisters and sheds like a snake-skin you learn a lesson and reach for the factor 50. I also am a ginger-blonde heritage and I burn at the drop of a hat. Heeding the advice might save your life…and there’s not many number one singles that can claim that as an ongoing thing!!
I’m also team ginge, and have had some pretty bad sunburns in my time. Was terrible at remembering sunscreen in my youth, but am now much better! I have friends who slap it on every day, regardless of the weather.
It’s surreal now to look back and think that people actually went physically out and physically bought this physical load of absolute rubbish. Worst number 1 ever, I really mean that.
Music is completely and utterly subjective… Having said that, there is no way that this is the worst number one of all time. It’s far from being the worst of 1999. It’s not even the worst number one of June 1999!!
Never heard it before, which makes sense as it wasn’t a single in NZ.
Even though Baz Luhrmann is technically Generation Jones (the 2nd half of the baby boomers), in that picture, he looks exactly like the stereotypical Gen X director. You know, you’d think a “song” like this wouldn’t be a hit. 1 in the US, but on the Cash Box chart, Byron MacGregor “The Americans” news commentary reached No. 1 in 1974, and it reached #4 on the Hot 100.
Yes it’s far from the only spoken word chart hit. Sometimes they do catch on, for whatever reason. I think ‘Sunscreen’ possibly benefited from the turn of the millenium, and the Y2K uncertainty, with it’s reassuring voice and its ‘everything’s going to be alright in the end’ sort of message.
THAT was odd…but I do like it better than some of the other stuff you had lately. Different is good many times…and this was different.
Odd will always be better than boring!