Fairlight synthesizers were starting to fill up the airwaves at the beginning of the 80s. You’d generally hear them in service of robotic, thumping songs, as human met machine in some kind of funky dystopia.
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But The Korgis used the instrument in a somewhat novel way, creating a bed for a dreamy ballad. The resulting song, “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime,” earned the band the biggest hit of their career.
From Two to Four to Three
Out of a band called Stackridge came James Warren and Andy Davis, who formed The Korgis in 1978. Both men wrote and sang, allowing for a pretty even division of labor on the band’s 1979 self-titled debut album. That album produced a British hit in “If I Had You”, a woebegone New Wave ballad distinguished by weeping slide guitar.
Feeling like they could stretch their sound a bit on their sophomore album, The Korgis expanded into a four-piece. To make that happen, they added guitarist Stuart Gordon and keyboardist Phil Harrison.
But co-founder Andy Davis left even before that second album, Dumb Waiters, was complete. As a result, James Warren had to go back in and re-record vocals for songs that Davis had already sung in the studio, even ones that weren’t in Warren’s range. Luckily, the album’s big hit wasn’t one of those songs.
Live And “Learn”
After the success of “If I Had You”, Warren began plotting the type of song that would help break the band in America. He thought a sweeping ballad might be just the kind of thing that he needed. With that in mind, he sat at a piano and started stabbing away at a minor seventh chord.
The lyrics for “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometimes” emerged from Warren’s growing fascination with Buddhist philosophies. In particular, Warren honed in on the idea that one could start to see the world differently if they could rid themselves of some of the notions that are drilled at a young age.
At first, Warren imagined a typical band performance behind the piano and vocals. But producer David Lord envisioned the synthesizer as the driving force behind the song. It created the effect of a hypnotic reverie, one that entranced audiences all over the world. That included the US, where it made the Top 20 in 1980.
Behind the Lyrics of “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime”
“Change your heart, look around you,” James Warren sings at the beginning of “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime”. It’s a simple request offering a positive outcome. That kind of directness epitomizes the entire song. “It will astound you,” Warren promises.
A line like “I need your loving like the sunshine” could seem clichéd to some. But in the midst of the reflective music, it sounds like both an indisputable truth and a desperate plea. “Everybody’s got to learn sometime,” Warren steadfastly repeats in the chorus, almost willing his wish into existence.
As you might expect, such a unique hit was impossible to repeat for The Korgis. But they certainly left behind an unforgettable classic in “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime”, one that showed that a synthesizer could add touch to a song instead of just thump.
Photo by Gie Knaeps/Getty Images
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