Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime

The Korgis were James Warren on vocals and bass, and Andrew Cresswell-Davies (aka Andy Davis) on guitars and keyboards. The duo first came to the public attention in their native Britain with mid-tempo ballad "If I Had You," which made UK #13 in April 1979. It quickly transpired that, far from being newcomers to the music scene, the band had in fact been making records with the prog-rock quartet Stackridge between 1968 and 1976. After Stackridge petered out, Warren and Davis had continued to record, and followed up the success of their debut single with this sensitive ballad which became their only US hit.

In Jim Beviglia's book Playing Back The 80s: A Decade Of Unstoppable Hits, Korgis' frontman James Warren explained the impetus for "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime." "I'd been toying with the idea that it'd be great if I could just come up with a Transatlantic rock ballad, something that would appeal to the States, to the Americans as well as English listeners," he said. "So that's when I started playing the piano intro. Just one that chord, which is C-sharp minor seventh. And everything just sort of happened very easily, effortlessly from that. I think the whole tune was written in about ten minutes. I got straight down to writing the words. So it was a very fast thing." Warren also said the simple lyrics concealed big ideas. "At the time, I was very into Buddhist philosophy. And also there was a particular Indian spiritual teacher called (Jiddu) Krishnamurti. He had his very individual philosophy, but it was basically a Buddhist approach to life. I used to read his books constantly at the time. So the lyrics to that song were really his kind of idea which I had imbibed. This thing about changing fundamentally the way we look at life, the way we look at other people. Change your heart and look at the world with completely fresh eyes, not with the eyes of our social conditioning. Break away from your social conditioning and look at the world as if you were looking at it for the first time without any preconceptions. All that kind of stuff. As simply as possible, I made that the lyric of the song."

Warren explained in Playing Back The 80s that "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" was a creation that was impossible to repeat. "It was one of those unusual, magical things that just seemed to have a life of its own. It just seemed to work. It's not a repeatable kind of thing. I don't think I've ever been able to write 'Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime, Part II.' It's just sort of one of those one-off things."