Thread: Brad Paisley - Welcome To The Future [POUS]

"Welcome to the Future" is a mid-tempo song, with a production featuring percussion and steel guitar, with a synthesizer in the intro. The lyrics describe the changes that the narrator has seen in his lifetime, including the advances in technology and inter-cultural relationships.

In the first verse, he tells of how he wanted to be able to watch television in the car as a child, or have his own video game system instead of having to go to the video arcade. The second verse addresses advances in international relationships, by telling of how his grandfather fought against Japan in World War II, but the narrator "was on a video chat this morning / with a company in Tokyo." Verse three addresses the issue of racism after recalling a black friend who had a cross burned in his front yard by the Ku Klux Klan. This verse also alludes to the anti-racism movements of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the line "From a woman on a bus / to a man with a dream."

Paisley told Country Weekly magazine that he was inspired to write the song after hearing the announcement that Barack Obama would become President of the United States who he endorsed, and realizing that the first President in his children's lives would be an African American.This thought also led him to include memories of his own childhood in the song, as well as those of his grandparents: "If you went back in time and told me, waiting in line for Pac-Man, or [my grandfather] that his grandson would be playing Japan[…] that is just something."Paisley also said that he included the allusion to Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech in the final verse because he thought that King's "dream of racial equality" was realized by Obama's election

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