Album Blog: The Sound of Sunshine Track Listing (with commentary)

THE SOUND OF SUNSHINE:  SONG BY SONG WITH MICHAEL FRANTI

THE SOUND OF SUNSHINE: “The Sound Of Sunshine” is about wanting to bottle that experience of waking up in the morning, pulling the blinds and seeing that there’s a sunny day in front of us. It’s about finding the sunshine in some cloudy times. There are a lot of people out there waiting for a storm to pass, and I want to try to acknowledge that and bring them a little sunshine.

SHAKE IT: “Shake It’ is a fun song that we noticed people respond to pretty instantly. But if you listen closely, I think it’s also makes a deeper point about finding beauty in imperfection.  I admit I really like the last line, “It’s not about the way that you look. It’s about the way that you shook.” 

HEY HEY HEY: With “Say Hey” and “Hey World” and now this, I guess “Hey” is becoming a big word with me. At first this song was called, “No Matter How Life Is Today.” But every time we walked offstage after having played it, people would say, “Hey, where can we find that `Hey, Hey, Hey’ song.  So we actually did a vote online on our website about what we should call this. So the people have spoken, and they say, “Hey.”

ANYTIME YOU NEED ME: That’s a song about the importance of being there for someone else. I wrote it for my former girlfriend who’s still my best friend for life, when her mother was passing away.  It was for her, and now it’s for everybody.

I’LL BE WAITING: Many years ago, I opened for U2, and I was so impressed by the way they can write something big and yet intimate. Coming out of hip-hop, it was a lesson to me and I started to aspire to blend the eloquence of great hip-hop with the melody and power of great rock. With this song, I wanted to write something that was the kind of powerful anthem that people in an arena could sing. The point of the song is right in the lyric, “The best things in life aren’t things/They’re living, they’re breathing.” It’s a song about being there for other people, ready to catch them when they fall.

THE ONLY THING MISSING WAS YOU: That’s another love song. Wow, I guess there are a lot of love songs on this album. You spend your whole feeling there’s a void, and then you find another person somehow coming out of nowhere and somehow fills what it missing.

LOVE DON’T WAIT: This is a song about the urgency of love, and how we can’t wait for perfect scenarios and perfect people to come along – because they don’t really exist.

THE THING THAT HELPS ME GET THROUGH: In this song, I’m saying to a friend that just by being yourself and being there, you help get me through the difficult times. It’s very up-tempo kind of rocker -- almost like an old Tina Turner song. This song’s got some heavy rock guitar, so we wanted a beat danceable too.

GLORIA: I wrote “Gloria” in the hospital. They brought me the cheapest acoustic guitar from a nearby Guitar Center, and it had this sticker on it with a paper backing. As we were peeling it off, there was a silhouette of an angel that I noticed. I wanted to write a song about the angels that appear in this life. It’s for the angels who got me through that time. I used to sing in church growing up, and all those songs had “Gloria” in them, so mine does too.

HEADPHONES: When I was in the hospital I wanted to write a song to be played at my funeral. “Plug your headphones into my heart” was the line that came to me while I was on an I.V. drip and heart monitor.  Thankfully it won’t need to be played for at least 50 years! 

THE SOUND OF SUNSHINE GOING DOWN:  The “Sound Of Sunshine Going Down” is the sunset version of “The Sound Of Sunshine.” It’s for the time of day when you’ve had a busy and rough, difficult day and you watch the sun going down, you’re there with some friends and you have something to drink or eat and you watch the sun going down and it washes all your troubles away.

Purchase the single "The Sound of Sunshine" on iTunes HERE >>