Bruce Hornsby “The Way It Is” hit #1

The Way It Is Bruce Hornsby & the Range

Writer(s): Bruce Hornsby (see lyrics here) First Charted: August 2, 1986 Peak: 12 US, 11 CB, 12 RR, 12 AC, 3 AR, 15 UK, 13 CN, 12 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 38.89 video, 160.19 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Hornsby was born in Williamsburg, Virginia. His father was a former musician and oil exec who became a successful housing developer. As a former musician, he kept a Steinway piano which Bruce learned to play. When Michael McDonald heard him while on tour with the Doobie Brothers, he encouraged Hornsby to go to Los Angeles. Bruce and his brother John went to LA in 1980 and became staff songwriters at 20th Century Fox. Bruce played keyboards with Ambrosia and with Sheena Easton’s band before forming his own band, The Range, in 1984. He recorded a four-song demo of his own music after becoming frustrated with trying to write hits for others. One of the songs was “The Way It Is.” The song started as lyrics first and then he added a lick he liked. He thought the melody was strange, but kept playing it over and over. FB After shopping it around, he was signed to RCA. The first single, “Every Little Kiss,” only reached #72 on the Billboard Hot 100, although it would get reissued and go to #14. The second single – “the gentle and florid soft-rock jam” SG “The Way It Is” – went all the way to #1. It “is unambiguously a song about racism and about people with money doing everything in their power to keep their place atop the societal pyramid.” SG The chorus suggests pessism with the lines, “That’s just the way it is / Some things will never change.” However, when Hornsby adds the line, “But don’t you believe them” it implores “the need to resist complacency and never resign yourself to racial injustice as the status quo.” SF The song had “a consistent tempo and a jazz-inflected sound” SF and lacked the elements of conventional chart-toppers such as “a big chorus, shifts in momentum, [and] catchy hooks.” SF “Hornsby sings in a warm, smooth white-soul yarl. The drums echo just right, and the guitars noodle with processed precision, like they were soundtracking a cop show.” SG “That piano is something else…Hornsby keeps circling that main figure, dancing around it. He orbits the main melody, ducking in and out when it makes sense, never losing the melodic thread even when he’s playing solos.” SG Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Bruce Hornsby FB Fred Bronson (2007). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (4th edition). Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 655. SF Songfacts SG Stereogum (1/22/2021). “The Number Ones” by Tom Breihan WK Wikipedia First posted 10/27/2022.