‘STAND UP FOR SOMETHING’ | FROM ‘MARSHALL’
When Diane Warren started writing “Stand Up for Something” for a film about a key case early in future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s society-changing career, she didn’t aim small.
“I wanted to write a song that could have been Aretha or Sam Cooke,” says the eight-time Oscar nominee, beside her collaborator, Oscar-winning rapper Common, on a couch in her new Hollywood studios. “I listened to ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ over and over. ‘I want something that stands up to that!’ ”
Common says, “‘Change Is Gonna Come’ was written at a critical time in the world. We are living in a critical time in the world.”
Warren is right on top of that: “Our rights are under attack. Civil rights. Women’s rights. Gay rights. Free speech. Animal rights.”
“The environment,” interjects Common, nodding along with the list.
“We can’t passively sit here,” she says. “This song is like a battle cry.”
The storied songwriter says when she read the script of “Marshall,” she wrote down the line that became the backbone of the song: “It all means nothing / if you don’t stand up for something.” She says she had Andra Day in mind to sing it (“There’s not one note of her singing you don’t believe”), unaware she was already cast in the 1940s-set movie as a jazz singer. Day then delivered a spot-on 1960s R&B vocal for the song, reminiscent of Etta James.
“What’s the biggest message I want people to stand up for?,” Common asks. “That’s love. ‘Let the ways of love be the ways of man.’ It’s that type of love that will make people do something for someone else,” he says.