Song of the Day 6/27: Colin Hay, “Beautiful World”

I apologize for the mellow streak, but laid-back music is about the only thing that keeps the rage at bay these days.

This Colin Hay song from his 2001 album “Going Somewhere” actually addresses the need to take solace in the simple things as a refuge from the deluge of doom. The verses list his pleasures, but the bridge could have been written last week:

All around is anger
Automatic guns
Death in large numbers
No respect for women or our little ones

The song fueled Hay’s comeback after years of scrabbling when it was used in the season finale of the first season of “Scrubs” in 2002, at star Zach Braff’s suggestion. Hay eventually appeared in several episodes of what became one of the touchstone TV comedies of the aughts.

Hay, the Scottish-born Australian who fronted Men at Work, wrote the song after moving to Los Angeles and getting sober. He told Songfacts,

It would seem that most of the world has some kind of faith based in religion, which to me is just mad. It’s insanity. … [But] when you’re getting sober, when you go to meetings it’s very God-dy. They talk about God a lot. So, that’s challenging when you don’t really believe in God.

But when I was sitting out in the backyard having just given up the drink, trying to sit and meditate in some way, shape, or fashion, I became aware of my place in the universe, if you like. You don’t tap into it, and it’s not even really that you do anything. It’s a state of being, which is not that you know anything. You just feel a sense that you’re part of some kind of universal consciousness — whatever you want to call it. There’s a benevolence to the universe which I hadn’t felt before.

As the past week has demonstrated, the benevolence doesn’t extend to the entire universe, but it does exist, and songs like this one can help you tap into it.