Welcome To The Future by Brad Paisley

“The future” in the literal sense is the time that is ahead of us, but in the figurative sense it means so much more. When people in the 1950s talked about “the future” they thought of advancement in technology and a better more utopia-like society. For many, “the future” is an idea, a better day and another chance. It’s reason we get up in the morning, it’s hope.

Brad Paisley reminds us to take a second and realize that we live in the future of our past selves. He asks the question, what has become of the things that we hoped for in the past, what has truly changed, what is this future that we live in?

In “Welcome To The Future” Paisley’s second single off of his eighth studio album American Saturday Night, he crafts a personal reflection on how far we’ve come. He starts with the trivial singing about how much he wished he had a Pac-Man arcade machine when he was younger and ends the verse commenting how he know owns it on his phone.

The chorus immediately breaks into the religious exclamation “Glory, glory, Hallelujah.” There is something amazing about the advancement in technology that has now mad Pac-Man portable, but not in the spiritual sense. At first, this puzzled me, until I listened further into the song.

“Glory, glory, Hallelujah” is a reaction to something he sings about later in the song and by starting with the anecdote about Pac-Man, he slowly draws the listener in with his characteristic charm and silliness to discuss something deeper.

The second verse goes deeper into his past as he thinks about his grandfather fighting in World War II having to write letters to his grandmother to stay in touch. He wonders what they would think about the fact that now he video chats easily with a company in Japan.

Brad examines the human part of technological advances making us think more about how these changes have affected the way we interact with each other. As the second verse moves closer to the human conditions, in the last verse Paisley takes us one step further into the heart of what has truly developed in the future, not the technology, but our humanity.

The final verse begins with the story of a football player he knew in high school who was African American that asked a Caucasian girl to prom. Members of the Ku Klux Klan reacted to this by putting a burning cross on his front yard. Focusing on this experience, Paisley reminds us how far we’ve come from a woman on a bus, Rosa Parks, to a man with a dream, President Obama.

Glory, Hallelujah

Maybe Paisley was referring to Martin Luther King Jr. but for some reason my mind went straight to President Obama. Regardless of your political viewpoint and how you feel that President Obama is doing with his job currently it is amazing that only 40 years ago the idea of an African-American President was preposterous and now it’s a reality.

The President invited Paisley to perform at the White House to celebrate country music last summer. Before he performed “Welcome To The Future” for the President he explained how the election inspired him and how he wrote this song to capture how it made him feel.



One of the things that I love about Brad Paisley is that his music has a shine to it. You can feel the sunlight between the notes. Brad Paisley not only sees the glass as half full but cherish every drop of water that is left. Listen to “Welcome To The Future,” and you’ll understand why.