Last night on my way home from work, I heard this tune for the first time.
Being the curious cat that I am, I googled it this morning only to find that the phrase is also part of a letter written by John Keats , though I think Ziggy Marley means it in a more universal sense than the highly emotional, death-knocking-his-door, completely love-addicted Keats. (As a complete aside, who wouldn’t want to receive the letters he wrote to Fanny Brawne?!)
Take out the “let’s go fly a kite” line (which reminded me of children skipping through the park with Mary Poppins), and I think that it’s a right nice little song. I can’t help but wonder if we all spent a little more time actually loving — and not indulging ourselves in the “guilty pleasures of negative emotions” as my MIL says — how different the world might be.
In the ’70s, I think the version of this song was “What the World Needs Now” by the incomparable Burt Bacharach (whose commercial for Geico completely cracks me up!).
Blog It Like You Mean It 