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Change the World

"Change the World"
Change the World Primary Cover.jpg
Single by Eric Clapton
from the album Phenomenon
B-side "Danny Boy"
Released July 5, 1996 (1996-07-05)
Format 7" vinyl · MC · CD · digital
Genre Soft rock · blue-eyed soul · pop
Length 3:54
Label Reprise
Writer(s) Tommy Sims, Gordon Kennedy, Wayne Kirkpatrick
Producer(s) Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds
Eric Clapton singles chronology
"Motherless Child"
(1994)
"Change the World"
(1996)
"Born in Time"
(1998)

"Change the World" is a pop song written by Tommy Sims, Gordon Kennedy, and Wayne Kirkpatrick whose best-known version was recorded by the British recording artist Eric Clapton for the soundtrack of the 1996 film, Phenomenon. The track was produced by R&B record producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds. The single release, Clapton recorded for Reprise and Warner Bros. Records, reached the Top 40 in twenty countries and topped the charts in Canada as well as Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40 charts in the United States. The single was prized with eight awards, among them three Grammy Awards, Clapton took home at the 39th annual ceremony in 1997.

In an interview with American Songwriter, Gordon Kennedy retold the recording history of the song: "'Change The World' was a song written over the course of a year by Tommy Sims, Wayne Kirkpatrick, and myself. On a recording session in Quad Studios in Nashville, in the early '90s, Wayne and I were recording some demos in an attempt to do the 'artist' thing. We recorded four songs that day, three of which wound up on Garth Brooks' Chris Gaines CD (this would happen several years later). During that session, Tommy was there playing bass and played us the nugget of an idea he had, wondering if it might be something that would work for the sound we were doing. He had the title and a chord progression and melody direction going. Wayne would ask him some months later for a tape of the idea so he could work on it. He wrote the lyrics to the chorus and all but one line of the second verse. Then, it went dormant again for a time before I asked Wayne about its progress. He gave me what he'd done on it. I finished writing the music, went to Columbus, Ohio and laid down a demo track with Tommy. He was there working on a church choir album. On the way home, I listened to a tape of the track and dictated lyrics into another little handheld recorder (I still have the micro-cassette!). I wrote the lyrics to the first verse and the missing line in the second verse. When I got home, I went into the studio and did a guitar and all of the vocals for a finished demo, the one Clapton heard later... None of the three of us were together when we wrote what we each wrote on the song".


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