Changes
by Bruce Hornsby
“Have you ever heard or felt the sentiment that music can save you or change the world?”
In my opinion, that is such an objective statement. Do I believe it can change the world? No, but can it change one person's world and give them that glimmer of hope they need in a moment or juncture?
Quite simple, absolutely!
"Standing in line, marking time waiting for the welfare dime, cause they can't buy a job."
Personally, this hits deep.
Now, to illustrate, it's time for some FreeDa Funk fun facts! I suffer from Multiple Sclerosis and am currently on disability; let's say that's my welfare "line." well, you have to do all those things online now. As I have been put off of work by the doctor, take a guess as to who can't buy a job.
"That's just the way it is." the second single from Bruce Hornsby's debut album of the same name in 1986 rings as true today as it did then! People are struggling all over the world, not just at home but also abroad.
The Way It Is is just as relevant, perhaps even more so than in 1986. Bruce Hornsby really pulled no punches with this one, taking jabs at the Economic Opportunity Act, also known as the Poverty Act of 1964, and even aimed at the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
With just one song, he has reached generations of people and, because of some artists, has even gained more demographics than anyone probably considered possible at the time. Bruce Hornsby's almost painfully self-aware ballad has been covered, remixed, and re-imagined by some of this generation's greatest poets, 2Pac, with Changes in 1998, charting at 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 and 12 on the hip-hop charts.
Snoop Dogg released his take on it in 2008 with Can't Say Goodbye with a heartfelt chorus on the Ego Trippin album. The album hit #3 on the Billboard 200 chart, followed by Wishing For A Hero in 2020 on the "Goat" album by Polo G, and this one hit #2 on the Billboard 200 as well as the Billboard top R&B/ Hip-Hop albums. Bruce Hornsby has had his song essentially on the charts in some form since the decade it was released, and it's not hard to see why! Yet another track that makes itself so easy to work with.
In the first 30 seconds, that piano gives you a rhythm all its own to the way the percussion starts around that 30-second mark, the anticipation waiting for it, and it snaps in so crisp you would have thought there was a drum machine. Still, no, it was John Molo, the drummer for Bruce Hornsby and The Range; the flow of the production and the lyrics in any genre by any artist have made it literally a contemporary classic, but on more than one occasion has succeeded on the hip hop charts just as much ( is an understatement) because it has been more!
So I guess when all is said and done, maybe a song won't change the world but will reach generations of this world, and perhaps that is just a little better, and all in all, "That's just the way it is, some things will never change."
