THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

498-Timmy Thomas-Why Can’t We Live Together.

1972-Number 12 single.

Best Bit-At 1.35. The message on the ‘Hotline Bling’ remains the same as it did back in 1972.

Timothy E. Thomas was born on November 13th, 1944, in Evansville, Indiana, United States. Before finding success with this song he had released a number of singles in the late 1960’s, both as as a solo artist, and as part of a group called ‘Phillip & the Faithfuls’ with no commercial success.

‘Why Can’t We Live Together’ is taken from Timmy Thomas’ debut Album of the same name, and was released on ‘Glades Records’ a subsidiary of ‘TK Records’ the home of artists such as ‘KC & The Sunshine Band,’ and George McCrae.(see also best songs 893-375 and 64.)Thomas has explained how the song came about, ‘I was sitting in my study, and I heard Walter Cronkite (1916-2009,American broadcaster.) I’ll never forget this, he said, ‘35,000 Viet Cong died today, 15.000 American.’ I said ‘what,’ you mean that many mothers children died today? In a war that we can’t come to the table and sit down and talk about this, without so many families losing their loved ones, I said ‘Why can’t we live together.”

‘Why Can’t We Live Together’ was released in it’s original ‘demo’ form. The idea was to take the song into the studio and add a full band, but after listening to it ‘TK Records’ staff producer Steve Alaimo suggested that the song would be best released without any further work. Timmy Thomas had recorded the song in mono, and played every instrument on the track, predominantly using a ‘Lowrey organ.’ He also used an early version of a drum machine, which was unusual at that time. He played a guitar with his left hand, and said that he played bass with his foot. Thomas has said,’I did it as a one man band.’

In 2015 the song was heavily sampled with different lyrics by the Canadian Rapper Drake (see also best songs 1043-921 and 858) as ‘Hotline Bling,’ taking the song to Number 2 on Billboard, a place higher than Thomas’ original. Timmy Thomas has said he was pleased that Drake had chosen his track, and that his kids were very impressed.

‘No matter, no matter what colour, you are still my brother.’