Actually the story that this song was based on a graduation speech is a myth i'm afraid. It started life as an article in the Chicago Tribune newspaper on June 1st 1997 and was written by a Journalist called Mary Schmich who had written it as a fictitious piece , purely based on what she would LIKE to say to students - written in the style of a graduation speech. On July 31st 1997 , someone extracted the work from her column and composed an e-mail which they circulated worldwide - spamming in other words - crediting the work to American author Kurt Vonnegut and citing it as a valedictory speech , offering advice to students. Baz Luhrmann had been toying with a piece of music which he was working on "Everybody's free" and was contacted by a friend who had received the e-mail and thought that it was very inspirational material - just the kind of thing which Baz Luhrmann was looking for. They checked online to get more information on Kurt Vonnegut and were horrified to discover that he was not laying claim to this piece and said that he had no knowledge of it whatsoever. They eventually traced the original source to the afore mentioned journalist and made a deal with the paper to release this track which became "Everybody's free to wear sunscreen" but became dubbed "The sunscreen speech". Despite the fact that Mary Schmich was properly credited with this piece of work on Baz Luhrmann's credits , sadly many people still think that this was a genuine graduation speech and she even received scores of nasty e-mails accusing her of plagarism ! I love this song and find that even when I feel really low , I just need to play it and it reminds me of what i've got and what i've still got to look forward to. Truly inspirational stuff. I was fascinated to learn the truth behind it and had to share it with you all. Apologies for waffling on though.