EPISODE 170

In 1999 filmmaker Baz Luhrmann released the song “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen,” a 7-minute-long graduation speech set to downtempo electronic music. It was a highly unlikely hit that made its way across continents and eventually into the ears of a young Avery Trufelman via the album NOW That’s What I Call Music Volume 2. For over 20 years, Trufelman has applied the song’s advice to her daily life: “wear sunscreen… be nice to your siblings… do one thing every day that scares you.” This unusual song has left a lasting impression, and yet for Trufelman, it makes no sense that “The Sunscreen Song” was commercially successful. We investigate the song’s many architects — novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich and Baz Luhrmann himself — to unpack one of the internet’s first conspiracy theories that turned into Billboard’s greatest outlier. 

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The BBC documentary on “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”

Another speech set to music, Byron MacGregor/Gordon Sinclair’s “Americans,” peaked at #4 in 1974

SONGS DISCUSSED

Baz Luhrmann - Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Gil Scott Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Think - Once You Understand