Songfacts®:

• Louisiana born and raised Jon Batiste is a member of a New Orleans musical dynasty that includes jazz connoisseurs Lionel Batiste of the Treme Brass Band, Milton Batiste of the Olympia Brass Band, and drummer Russell Batiste Jr. He started his career at a young age, and as a 17-year-old jazz pianist released his debut album, Times in New Orleans. Batiste later attended the Juilliard School and formed the Stay Human band with some of his Juilliard peers. In 2015, CBC announced that Jon Batiste And Stay Human would serve as house band on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. This song is a track from his eighth album, We Are.
• This song speaks of the sexual and social revolution spearheaded by the likes of Elvis Presley, James Brown and Mavis Staples. The way they moved and expressed themselves onstage liberated people to act as they wanted rather than being constrained by society.
  
  When I move my body just like this
  I don't know why
  But I feel like freedom
• Batiste's message in the song is about gay rights as well as racial equality. "It's like when Elvis was shaking his hips on the Ed Sullivan Theater stage and people were flipping out," he told Relix magazine. "It's just the whole aspect of fighting for people's rights and their freedom, and not just so that we could drink out of the same water fountain or go to the same bathroom. It's also so that we could love who we want and be how we want."
  
  Batiste added that sexuality is an important part of releasing people to be themselves. "You see James Brown dancing in a certain way and it makes you want to be free, and it makes you open up your identity and not fit into the mold of what society wants to give you," he said. "Mavis is somebody who represented that, and all of the Freedom Fighters represented that. I wanted to make a song that explicitly speaks to the sexual and social revolution that happened through that music, and is still happening today."
• Batiste wrote the song with:
  
  New York songwriter Autumn Rowe (Leona Lewis' "Collide," Cher Lloyd's "Swagger Jagger," Karmin's "Hello").
  
  Los Angeles pianist and composer Andrae Alexander (The Birth of a Nation, Detroit).
• Batiste started planning We Are in September 2019 in his dressing room at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He recorded the album in New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles in between his gigs as the bandleader and musical director on The Late Show. Batiste co-produced it with Kizzo, a Dutch producer who he'd been introduced to by Autumn Rowe.
• Batiste earned 11 nominations for the 64th Grammy Awards, making him the most-nominated person at the ceremony (held in 2022). The noms included Album Of The Year for We Are, Record of the Year for "Freedom," and three for the music he composed for the movie Soul.
  
  Backed by a very colorful and energetic troupe, Batiste performed "Freedom" at the ceremony, entering the crowd in a jubilant finale. The song won for Best Music Video and We Are took home Album Of The Year. "I love music, I've been playing since I was a little boy," he said in his acceptance speech. "It's more than entertainment for me, it's a spiritual practice."