Baz Luhrmann -- "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) (Edit)

Somehow I made it through the '90s without ever hearing this song. And somehow I almost made it through the '00s as well, until last night. But now I've heard it and looked it up and I see it made it to the top 50 in the late '90s. I listened to the radio even less then than I do now, so that explains it.

I only heard it now because I got the CD "Now That's What I Call Music" #2 and it's the last track. I put all the songs on my Ipod and was listening last night and it came on. When I heard the spoken voice I was thinking "Nooo! This can't be happening." But when it got going I was hearing some interesting stuff, almost like self-help things in a very wry way.

Looking up the song since then, I notice it has a strange history, but I can't remember every detail. Something about people thinking Kurt Vonnegut wrote it, then it turned out to be a newspaper columnist, then the track was read by someone other than the artist on the record, who turns out to be a famous director, etc.

Also, there are a few different versions. The one on "Now" is called "Edit," just over 5 minutes long.

Well, as it turns out, when I saw the album covers inside the "Now" CD, I actually have the original CD on which the full version of this song can be found, "Baz Luhrmann Presents Something For Everybody." There it's called by the same title except for the word "Mix." It's also over 7 minutes. I didn't buy the CD new but it's one of those ones that I periodically buy at Goodwill just because it looks interesting at the time. But I never listened to it.

This CD is one -- I might have mentioned it before -- that I saw at Goodwill and didn't buy. Then I came home and was moving some CDs and noticed that I'd bought one at Goodwill before. So I was happy that I didn't end up with two copies! Today I listened to a piece of it and heard part of the difference, that there's a vocalist after the first couple minutes. I stopped there.

Here's something weird. When you put this CD (the "Baz Luhrmann Presents... one) in when iTunes is running, it comes up with the artist as Tara Morice and the title as "Time After Time [The S.F.E. Version]". I don't know what that's all about.

Save your love letters and don't listen to people who berate you. Don't read beauty magazines because they'll make you feel ugly.