To celebrate the release of his new single, “I’ll Be Waiting,” Michael Franti is offering fans the opportunity to download it for FREE. Head to MichaelFranti.com or Facebook.com/MichaelFranti to download. You can also check out the powerful lyrics of “I’ll Be Waiting” (Radio Edit Mix) in a brand new lyric video.
“I’ll Be Waiting” has special meaning to Franti who describes it as “an epic and vast song about intensely personal experiences.” Below are Franti’s personal thoughts on the song and what it means to him.
“At its core it is a love song, but not in the classic sense of the phrase.
It is a song of searching, failure, growth and healing.
It is a love song between a friend who is addicted to heroin and his lover who is desperately waiting for him to clean up.
It is a love song for a single mother who has just seen her teenage daughter run away to the city, only to come home pregnant and alone.
It is a love song for an over-demanding father whose son has gone off to war only to come home broken with scars inside and out.
It is a love song for a bus driver who spends his whole day helping others only to come home to his wife who is battling cancer.
It is a love song for a child who is bullied at school and one day snaps and is now calling his mother from juvenile detention.
It is a song about leaving home and searching for ourselves outside of our "selves" in the material world.
Buying the right car to make us look important, the right jeans to make us slimmer, the right friends to make us more special, the right drugs to make us more confident, the right lover to fix that part of us that is empty.
Inevitably all these things fail and as we fall on our faces we come to discover those that we rebelled against the most, were the people who had faith in us even when we were at our worst…"Whenever you call me, whenever you need me, wherever you wander, until you see me, I'll be Waiting, waiting for you…" With open arms to catch us, hold us, heal us… even when we think we are not worthy of it.”