
In 1999, Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann crafted an unlikely hit single from a newspaper column. Part earnest advice, part radio hit, the spoken “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” became a manifesto of a generation just as a century was drawing to a close. Taken from a 1997 Chicago Tribune column, “Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted On The Young” by Mary Schmich, the Sunscreen Speech, as it became known, was taken in by listeners with concentrated affection. (It reached number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., but hit No. 1 in the U.K. and Ireland.) Voiced by Australian voice actor Lee Perry and backed by a choral cover of 1991’s “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” by dance-pop star Rozalla, the spoken song played tribute to the learned wisdom of nostalgia and the innocent vulnerability of youth, and has been played at more graduations, senior proms and funerals than we could count. Schmich’s recipe for guidance is full of simple nothings — stretch, dance, floss — but is somehow argued by some to be one of the best collections of intrepid truths produced from the decade. At least we’re pretty sure Schmich was right about one thing: the sunscreen.
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