Closer to Free
A 90s Anthem for Our Time
There’s a one-hit wonder from the ‘90s that’s stuck with me for nearly 30 years, and somehow it popped back into my life this past week. Closer to Free by BoDeans was released in 1993, but it didn’t gain mainstream success until 1996 when it peaked at #16 on the Billboard Top 100 as the theme song for Party of Five. I don’t think I watched a single minute of that show—I was too busy glued to MTV and VH1 music videos. In 1996, I was 12, deep into my early obsession with rock, pop, and playing guitar. Back then, I loved the song for its fun guitar riff, the easy-to-strum acoustic, and of course, that catchy, sing-along chorus. At the time, it was just a fun, feel-good song. But like so many songs from my youth, the lyrics have finally hit me in a way they didn’t before. And honestly, it feels like the perfect reflection of my philosophy—and maybe even the state of the world today.
If my personal philosophy could be summed up in a fun, upbeat ‘90s pop song, Closer to Free would be it, no question.
Everybody wants to live how they wanna live
Everybody wants to love how they wanna love
Everybody wants to be closer to free
Everybody wants respect, just a little bit
And everybody needs a chance once in a while
Everybody needs to touch, now and then
Everybody wants a good, good friend
Everybody one, everybody two, everybody free
Closer to free
We’re all living this thing called life for the first time. Every single person, fumbling through it in our way, trying to figure it out, trying to make the best of it. And if we’re being real, we’re all after the same thing: freedom. The freedom to live how we want, to love who we want, to be respected, to have opportunities, and to have meaningful connections with others. It’s not just a nice idea—it’s a truth at the core of what it means to be human. What is life, if not a search for freedom, in every sense of the word?
When they say “everybody,” they mean everybody. The kid born into hardship, the oppressed, the marginalized, the refugee, the forgotten. Everyone has the right to live, love, and be free, no matter where they come from or what they’ve been through. And if you believe, as I do, that freedom is a fundamental right, then you can’t turn your back on anyone. The Palestinian orphan, the black single mother in Chicago, the Native American college student, LGBTQ people in places where they face persecution, the refugee father and his young disabled daughter fleeing war, only to be met with hostility. They all want the same thing: to be closer to free. They deserve respect. They deserve a chance. They deserve love.
For me, this isn’t just a song—it’s a philosophy. It’s a way of seeing the world. Freedom isn’t something to take lightly or treat as optional. It’s the foundation of justice. And when we deny others the freedom to live and love on their own terms, we’re denying their humanity.
What gets me is how many people, who already have freedom, willfully try to stop others from getting the same. We see it everywhere—in political systems that trap the poor, in cultural norms that reject difference, in laws that tear families apart. The paradox of our time is that some people who are already free seem determined to keep others from being free, too. That’s a tragedy, and it’s something we shouldn’t accept.
We’re all in this together. Life is short, it’s fragile, and it’s shared by all of us. The question is: what are we doing with that shared experience? Are we using our privilege to expand freedom, or are we using it to shrink it? It’s a question we each have to answer because the way we choose to answer it affects all of us.