"Peaceful World" is a duet with the female soul singer India.Arie, whose career was just getting started. She flew to Bloomington, Indiana, to record the song with Mellencamp after appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago to promote her first album, Acoustic Soul.
The song deals with issues of race. Mellencamp has often brought up the subject, including in lyrics about a black man in "Pink Houses," and showing a white girl dancing with a black man in the video for "Cherry Bomb." In "Peaceful World," the message is much more overt, as India.Arie sings: "Racism lives in the US today."
The song was first played during the 2001 Indy 500 in a commercial for the Indy Racing League (IRL). India.Arie was not on the version in the commercial. "Peaceful World" then became the official song of the Indy Racing League. Mellencamp's wife, model Elaine Irwin-Mellencamp, was a spokeswoman for the league.
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