Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime

"Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" features a distinctive synthesizer line as primary sound, based on a prominent keyboards arrangement played by Phil Harrison.

The song also is notable for its simple, sparse lyrics, but with a direct message. Related to that, lead singer and bassist, James Warren, has said that the song took only 10 or 15 minutes to write, after he sang the first thing to come into his mind while he played both the chords and melody on the piano. Producer David Lord subsequently added the bigger arrangement and strings.[3]

The distinctive instrument played after each chorus is the guzheng, an eighteen-string Chinese zither. The song also features a brief violin section in the middle, as well some pizzicato after each chorus.

About the meaning of the song, Warren said:

At that time I was into new wave philosophies about working on yourself, meditation and that sort of stuff. The whole lyric comes out of that. It wasn’t a romantic song at all. For me it was all about an individual changing and being a different sort of person – trying to find out the root of your inner confusion, dealing with it and becoming a better person. So it was literally a philosophical lyric.[3]

The song, from the group's second album, Dumb Waiters, was released on 11 April 1980, and reached number five on the UK Singles Chart[4] and number 18 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.[5] The song topped the singles charts in France,[6] was also number one in Spain.[7] It charted at number five in Ireland,[8] number six in Switzerland,[9] number 11 in the Netherlands,[10] number 11 in Australia,[11] number 12 in New Zealand,[12] and number 14 in Belgium.[13] That represented the peak of the Korgis' chart success.

The original 1980 version of "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" appears on the following compilation albums and CDs:

• The Best of The Korgis (1983)
• Archive Series (1997)
• Greatest Hits (2001)
• Don't Look Back – The Very Best of The Korgis (CD1) (2 CD) (2003)

In 1990, Warren and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Cresswell-Davis (a.k.a. Andy Davis) reformed the Korgis to re-record "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" for a charity album in support of the International Hostage Release Foundation.[14] That version of the song appears on the compilation CD and DVD Kollection (2005).

The Korgis also recorded a live, acoustic version of "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" in the summer of 2005, which was intended for release on Kollection, but which eventually made its appearance in 2006 on the Unplugged CD.

An alternate version of "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime", with a different second verse, was included as a bonus track on the 1999 CD re-issue of 1980 album Dumb Waiters. That alternate version also appears on the compilations Klassics – The Best of The Korgis (2001) and Don't Look Back – The Very Best of The Korgis (CD2) (2 CD) (2003), which also includes an uptempo, 3-minute 51-second, version of the song as its closing track, taking the number of variants of the song on the double-CD compilation to three.[15]

When Warren and Davis reformed their first band, Stackridge, in 2007, they incorporated "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" into their set, with Warren introducing it as a song he wrote for the Korgis. A live version by Stackridge was included in both the CD and DVD versions of The Forbidden City, recorded at one of the 2007 shows in Bath, England. Keyboardist Glenn Tommey and drummer Andy Marsden, both one-time backing musicians for The Korgis, were part of that incarnation of Stackridge.[16]

The Korgis

• James Warren – lead vocals, bass guitar, guzheng
• Stuart Gordon – electric guitar, violin
• Andy Davis – drums, bell tree
• Phil Harrison – keyboards

"(Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime) I Need Your Loving"
Single by Baby D
from the album Deliverance
Released	22 May 1995 (1995-05-22)[34]
Genre	Jungle
Length	4:10
Label	Production House, Systematic
Songwriter(s)	James Warren
Producer(s)	Nino/Dice
Baby D singles chronology
"Let Me Be Your Fantasy" (1994) "(Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime) I Need Your Loving" (1995) "So Pure" (1996)
Music video
"(Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime) I Need Your Loving" on YouTube

British electronic music group Baby D recorded a successful cover of the song, released as "(Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime) I Need Your Loving" on 22 May 1995 by Production House Records, as the fifth single from their only album, Deliverance (1996). It peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart[35] and was also a top 20 hit in Finland, Iceland, Ireland and Scotland. A partially black-and-white music video was produced to promote the single.

"Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" has been covered many other times over the years, including several versions that reached the UK Singles Chart, most notably those by the Dream Academy (1987), Brian Davis (1991), Yazz (1994), Army of Lovers (2001) and the Cantamus Girls Choir (2005).[58] NRG covered the song on their 1991 release The Real Hardcore. In 1997, a cappella group the King's Singers recorded the track with lead vocals by James Warren. In 2000, German music duo Marc et Claude sampled the song for their track "I Need Your Lovin' (Like the Sunshine)". In 2003, Erasure recorded the song on their cover album Other People's Songs.

In September 2004, Zucchero and Vanessa Carlton entered the French charts with their version of the song.[59] That same year, Beck also covered the song for the Michel Gondry film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.[60]

In May 2005, Zucchero and Lara Fabian performed and recorded a live version of the song with a full orchestra for the Symphonic Show on French television. In 2008, Glasgow indie band Glasvegas covered the song on the B-side of the second 7-inch of Geraldine. Richard Thompson covered the song as part of his 1000 Years of Popular Music tour in 2009, describing it on stage as the only good song to have been released in the 1980s.