It Hit Everyone Pretty Hard "What The World Needs Now" is, as much as anything else, a song to sing out, not just for a single human being but for the entire tribe of man. It's about the feeling of being human, of getting your heart, soul, and mind broken, of struggling with and eventually forgiving yourself, because that's how we are. It's about finding comfort and strength in a higher power and a loving memory. It's about faith in humanity. And while the singer might not be religious, it's also a song about finding solace in the idea that there are other people like you who are going through the same struggle, who have been through it themselves and come through it okay. It's the song "Everybody Hurts" without the finger-pointing and accusations of being heartless. It's an affirmation, not a rebuke. It's for everyone, not just the person making it. It's an outcry to the rest of the world, but it's an invitation as well, an invitation to humanity, to look inward. It's almost like being asked, _What the hell is this thing we call life, anyway?_ And the answer is, _We don't know, but it can be beautiful_. It can make you hurt, it can make you sad, it can make you mad. It can make you love. But more than anything else, what the world needs now is not a sermon. It's music. — That's why it was so important to me to capture the feeling of community, because we're still a society that is very much divided, very much in conflict with itself, and that division has seeped into so many levels of society. There is a large body of songs about loneliness, about heartbreak, about depression, but they are usually sung by artists who had a really hard time dealing with their own life before they were famous. They're not being sung by someone who is _comfortable_. It's easier for artists to write about the struggle than it is for people who are struggling every day. They aren't just writing about their experience; they're writing about their experience _so they can't relate to it_ and make it the problem. There is a fear that acknowledging the realities of everyday life will somehow dilute or diminish the beauty in the art, but the opposite is true. The truth, as always, is that it opens us up to hope and opportunity. When people are in pain, it can turn them inward. Their inner life can become darker and more complicated. It's a tragedy if that's the only way they feel like they can express themselves; if all their ideas are solely concerned with how to cope. But the other side is that it's not necessarily their fault. They grew up in a particular way, they were dealt a particular set of cards, and they didn't necessarily have the tools to cope with it. It's actually about being human. What's more important is that you find a way to cope with it that suits you, that keeps you honest and you growing. It's not about whether we're writing a love song or a sad song, it's about writing something that inspires people. And the fact that this song has found its way into people's hearts should show us that there are a lot of people who know that there are people like them in this world. — In the summer of 2008, I was sitting in my apartment listening to the radio, trying to distract myself from the anxiety that I was feeling. I was listening to "Radioactive" by Kings of Leon, a favorite band of mine. I was really enjoying the song and I was really excited about the performance I'd seen the night before, when I caught Kings of Leon's first-ever show at Madison Square Garden. It was my first time at the venue, and I knew that if I were there, then the rest of the crowd was at least as dedicated as I was, so I had to prepare. I was all worked up about how good I thought the show was going to be, so I left the TV on when I went to bed, and in my sleep I went back to the Garden with them. It was an amazing show. I slept for maybe five hours that night, which is about normal for me—one of the most relaxing parts of touring is sleeping and traveling in a car, and when you do that you lose track of time—and woke up around 5:30 AM. I listened to the radio in my car while I was driving around Queens trying to get to the gym for my workout at 6:00 AM. Something in "Radioactive" was playing, and then I heard that line: "You're not a bad kid." And that's when I turned off the radio. And then I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'm not _bad_? I wasn't raised in a cult, I didn't kill anyone, but I have to be a bad kid? I sat there in my car in my apartment, knowing I had to face the music soon, thinking, _Oh shit, this is something that I'm having to face again_. That's the weird thing about how it's portrayed—you're _not_ a bad person, you're not evil, you just make bad decisions. It's presented in a way that, as a society, we're supposed to be able to relate to. But really, it's so fucking depressing. That was _my_ life and it was a _hard_ life. And if I'm feeling bad about myself, what does that say about what they're feeling? The kid doesn't get to cry wolf. The kid doesn't get to claim that he's not a bad person, that he just made bad choices. That's such bullshit. At some point, the kid has to admit that he's a bad person. In my mind, when I wrote that song, I just wanted people to realize they could do something different. I didn't want to write about me. I didn't want to write about "Oh my God, it was so hard, I don't even know why I'm here." I wanted people to realize that they could do something different. When I wrote that line, "Your love don't work for me," I didn't realize that people would think, _Oh my God, that's me_. Because all I did was write the truth. It's not a song about a bad relationship or a bad marriage or what somebody else did. It's a song about me. It's about my relationship and about my marriage, and it's not a bad relationship or a bad marriage, it's just a relationship and marriage that we happen to be experiencing. But people always assume that I'm talking about me, because they think it's a song about an _individual relationship_. I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of fans who hear the word "love" and they want to say, "Oooh, I have a bad relationship" or "I'm married to a terrible person." No. Nobody said any of that. I said the words, "Your love don't work for me," but people are taking those words and saying, "Oh, I read into it. _This is_ love." But the words are not "Your love don't work for me," the lyrics are "Don't cry over him, he's with her." I mean, that's my personal view, but the reality is, you can't win. It's impossible to change people's minds on that level, so you just have to take it for what it is and find your truth within it. I did all this work for _Reign of Terror_ because the record label was saying that they needed to push buttons and that if I didn't agree to that, then they weren't going to release it. Then it hit me, at some point, that I was a kid in a band who was talking about love and getting laid and having fun. And here I was, about to do this tour where I was getting paid all this money, and people were going to come and have fun and have a good time, and that wasn't going to happen. That's what the record label was going to tell me. They would take me through this bullshit and they would say, "You're not a bad kid, you can do better, you're not doing yourself right." I was like, "Whoa. My feelings on this matter are stronger than yours." — One of the places that the lyrics to "Radioactive" first took me was to D.C., to get some new shoes. A while after this, I was out in L.A. at the White House. We were going back in to the studio and I had gone to a tattoo shop called Tattoos by Santo, and they took care of me. It was one of the most beautiful nights of my life. I'm not sure if it was because I was in love, or if it was because I was in love with the woman I was going to marry, but the night was unforgettable. The night was so much fun and so exciting and it was _real_. I realized in the middle of that night that I would always be happy, even if you can never get to a place where you're happy every single day of your life, which is, for all intents and purposes, a real and valid thing. That's when I realized that I'm going to love her forever. When we got home from that session, I had put my shoes on and was walking down the hallway when the door opened behind