A Place For Us

Album: Fitz and the Tantrums (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Singer Michael "Fitz" Fitzpatrick told Radio.com that this song speaks of music being the means by which everyone can fit in.

    "'A Place for Us' goes to the fundamental human desire for connection," he explained. "And it doesn't matter if you're the jock, the popular person in school, or you're the loner. Everybody on some level feels this loneliness or this need for connection, and wanting to feel like they belong. That song says, it doesn't matter who you are: there is a place, and we can maybe all find that together with music."
  • Noelle Scaggs, Fitz's co-singer and co-writer, took the theme of this song to heart when she created Diversify the Stage, a program designed to make the concert industry more inclusive for women and people of color, as well as the LGBTQ+ community. After the COVID-19 pandemic shut down touring, Scaggs mulled over her experience in the industry, where she often noticed she was the only woman of color - and person of color - in the room. She also felt a sense of responsibility as a Black woman to help her community, which was reeling from the murder of George Floyd and similar cases of police brutality against people of color.

    "The initial thing for me was feeling like I now had the opportunity to actually activate something that I could empower and control. I was getting so frustrated by the world, especially stuff that's going on here in the States," she explained in a 2023 Songfacts interview. "Coming to terms with my reality as a Black woman in this country and in the world and how my racial background will always be a barrier to certain access points for me. To live the best life possible, I have certain obstacles that are unconscious to some people. There's a glass ceiling that is not always intentional, it's just how it is. It was recognizing that and knowing that I didn't want anybody else to have that same walk."

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