This song has gone through some changes and rewrites. The first voice memo/demo was recorded September 21, 2014. The music I played for it was totally different to the version released.
When I started to record the song in the studio, I increased the tempo of the music because it felt right, not really thinking the struggles it would give me when it came to placing the vocals into a faster tempo. And doing vocals is another story, but I’ll save that for another day.
However, in this struggle to record vocals at a higher tempo and two years later, I recorded a slower version, with the guitars more strummed than arpeggiated and that slower version morphed into “The World We Live In” and the old version of the song became a song called “Faith In Life”, however that change happened on March 5, 2019.
And it was my youngest son who said to me he wants me to finish the slower version for him and release it. I just nodded my head and thought nothing of it, but then, if he was building LEGO he would sing the vocal melody, if he was drawing or playing with toys he would sing the vocal melody. So I got inspired to finish it.
A child is born with a heart of gold and life is there to turn it cold
I’ve seen so much research about how society, the family and the culture which the family creates all play a part in the views that child forms.
The lyric line basically came from Nikki Sixx and his book, “The Heroin Diaries”. Here is a quote from the book below;
Children are born innocent. At birth we are very much like a new hard drive – no viruses, no bad information, no crap that’s been downloaded into it yet. It’s what we feed into that hard drive, or in my case “head drive” that starts the corruption of the files.
In city streets where the abandoned play, we fill our cups and look the other way
This lyric line deals about the homeless, abandoned and forgotten people which our politicians ignore as they saddle up with the corporations. It’s basically influenced by the first verse lyrics from “Oh My God” from Sixx A.M.
I was listening a lot to the “This Is Gonna Hurt” album from Sixx A.M at the time, and for this song, it’s themes and lyrics became influential.
And I know there are a lot of lawsuits around plagiarism and all that, and how artists are scared to list their influences in case of a lawsuit, but you know, music is created because the person who is creating has been exposed to music. And I’m happy to have been exposed to the music of Nikki Sixx with the Crue, Brides and Sixx AM.
So many eyes looking at the sky, for a satellite or one last goodbye
This lyric line deals with religion and how people’s beliefs shape who they are and the actions they do and the paths they walk.
A billion lives looking for advice, a self help guide just to survive
It’s a trillion dollar industry in which others capitalize on our need to belong.
We face each day on our own, walk on roads we’ve never known, for that’s the world we live in
It took me a while to understand that i walk this Earth on my own, making my own decisions and making my own mistakes regardless if I have a partner or parents still alive. Once I learned to accept that I am the one responsible for my decisions, a funny thing happened, I stopped blaming people and suddenly I had different doors open and new paths to walk on. Control what you can control is what I say and that starts with you.
We need to stand for our rights or the bullies will win the fight, for that’s the world we live in
The bullies win the fight regularly because bullies are everywhere. Corporations bully towns for resources, citizens and the environment in their quest to make a profit. They even bully their workers.
How many hours of unpaid work have you done recently?
Outside the schoolyard these kind of bullies are known as people who “abuse their power”.
A child grows old to break down their walls, to take their fists and survive it all
That’s right, as we grow, we become resilient and develop a grit which defines us. But not all of the children make it to adulthood. And when I wrote the lyric, I was thinking of “The Unforgiven” from Metallica.
And those city streets are not the same no more as the voiceless rise with words we can’t ignore
Well demonstrations became a thing once upon a time and then people started to make money from stocks and wages kept going up and suddenly we had silence. Nothing was an issue anymore. And in this silence, the corporations grew even bigger, the rich got richer and the politicians made it clear that they are working for the corporations instead of the people who voted them in.
But the kids these days are different. They can’t vote yet, but they are showing their power as they demonstrate for climate change, gun reform and so on.
To rise and fall and stand through it all, we fight and crawl no matter how small
You need to be in it for life, standing up for your morals and principles and being open minded about the views of others. It’s not easy, but no one said life was meant to be easy.
As we learn in ways how to stay alive, for our time will come when we will arrive
And through all the challenges life throws our way, we find new ways to circumvent them or deal with them. Our world is chaotic and corrupted. It’s always been that way from when tribes morphed into Kings and Queens.
But at this point in time, with the tools the people have to communicate across the world, I believe we are the tipping point of change.
That’s the world we live in.
Below are some shots of the different lyrical changes the song went through.
Free Spirits Rising 
You must be logged in to post a comment.