Songfacts®:

• Here, Iggy Pop delivers a spoken-word monologue of a Lou Reed poem over sparse piano chords and Leron Thomas' lyrical trumpet.
• Iggy's friend, the late Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed, wrote "We Are The People" in 1970. It is part of a collection of poems published for the first time in the 2018 anthology Do Angels Need Haircuts? Reed penned them during a six-month period after he'd left the Velvet Underground and went to work for his father's accounting firm.
  
  Pop told the BBC that "We Are The people" completely resonated with him. "Like, 'wham,' like 'pow,'" he said. "It was the first poem in a book of lyrics and when I saw it, I thought, 'My God, this is the country today as I understand it, or at least one legitimate portrayal of the country today. It really spoke to me."
• Iggy Pop performed the track live at the February 26, 2020 Tibet House benefit show alongside Laurie Anderson. The artist and musician was married to Reed from 2008 until his death in 2013.
• Iggy Pop shared a minimal video for the song that shows one continuous, unbroken shot of the rocker's face as he recites the poem. He released the clip on March 2, 2020, which would have been Reed's 78th birthday.