Beauty in the World

Album: The Sellout (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the first single from American soul singer Macy Gray's fifth album, The Sellout. The song was originally a dance track until Gray turned it into more of a rollicking peace and love sing-a-long. "You get bombarded with opinion and expectations and what other people want and you forget what you do well," she said in press materials. "That song is what I do well."
  • This song was inspired by Gray's teenage daughter, who one day Macy overheard laughing hysterically in the next room. "I was having a really bad day and I heard my daughter just cracking up in the next room," she recalled. "She has this really great laugh and I didn't even know what she was laughing at. I thought 'at least she's happy.' And I felt at least I hadn't failed there, because my daughter's happy."
  • In our interview with Macy Gray, she talked about how her kids inspired this song. Said Gray: "It's a good balance when things are crazy as always, and you go home and you've got kids, and at least half of the time, they're making you happy."
  • The song was picked up as the end-title song for the 2010 Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher starring feature film, Killers.
  • The music video, which was directed by Tom Petty's daughter Adria, features Gray performing the song with cheerleaders along with kids jumping rope, dancing and hand clapping.
  • This song was played during the series finale of the ABC dramedy series Ugly Betty. Another ABC series, Private Practice, also used the song in its series-ending final episode.

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