36. Kevin Morby - “Beautiful Strangers”

I imagine this song as a sort of unifying force, the human spirit given form, winding its way around the world through various countries, cities, towns, villages, forests, fields and plains and bringing together everyone it encounters. It’s like a new age pied piper – only it’s a force for good rather than evil, so maybe more like two giant arms wrapping around the planet trying to encompass all of humanity within the warmth of a hug.

It recognizes that there is some fucked up shit going on within the world, and yet it sees reason hope. It has faith – and not in any conventional, removed, and subjective god of an ancient and stale religion, but in the dynamic and tangible power of human love that intertwines and unites us all each and every day of life. It’s a call for evolution, but a chosen evolution (a.k.a. revolution), a chance to do the hard thing and turn our backs on all the dark shit we so often stubbornly blame on “human nature”. It insists that we can shape human nature, that we have power, and that has humans we have the gift to make decisions not simply based upon instinct or short term survival, but upon a logic and rational thought that looks towards the betterment of the distant future. All it takes is fortitude and a willingness to work together, to truly see the humanity in each and every one of us, to dismantle oppression and various structures of power and promote a system of equity that represents and works for everyone.