Soak Up The Sun

"Soak Up The Sun" comes off as a casual song about enjoying the simple things in life, but its really a rather incisive look at our reactions to climate change. "We already knew what was happening in the environment, and yet everything that you saw on MTV was, Like, bling and Rolls Royces and girls, and it just was such a weird dichotomy," Sheryl Crow explained to People. "That's what inspired the song: looking over at MTV, like, 'Whoa, what is happening here?'"

Crow wrote this song with Jeff Trott, a collaborator on many of her hits, dating back to "Everyday Is a Winding Road" and "A Change Would Do You Good" on her second album in 1996. Trott came up with the idea on a flight from Portland, Oregon, to New York. He told Songfacts: "I'm thinking this is really ironic that I'm leaving Portland being soaked in rain, and I'm actually going to New York to soak up some sun. I'm going to New York to soak up some sun. That's got a ring to it. That's kind of cool. Then I started thinking about the sun, and I started thinking of these Beach Boys-style harmonies. On that five-hour flight, I had come up with the whole song completely in my head, not all the lyrics necessarily. I had a good chunk of the chorus of 'Soak Up The Sun,' but I had harmonies and everything all in my head, and I'm just having to scratch it down on a piece of paper."

The last line in the song is an interesting twist: I got my 45 on so I can rock on As Jeff Trott and Sheryl Crow started working on the song together, they started talking about the then-recent Columbine shootings, where two students went on a killing spree at their high school before committing suicide. "We kind of carried that over into the song as the voice of Sheryl as a young teenager with a lot of oddball friends who can't really quite make out why people are the way they are," Trott explained to Songfacts. "There's a reference to 'I've got my 45 on so I can rock on.' The 45 on was like a kid with a gun, originally, and then we thought that's a little scary. We were talking about Columbine and we're like okay I've got my 45 on, so I can rock on, like I can blast you guys. I'm going to blast all the people that are bugging me. That's kind of where we were at with it, and then we said that's just a little too... over the top."