"What It's Like" is a song by American musician Everlast. It was released in September 1998 as the lead single from his album Whitey Ford Sings the Blues. The song is typical of the style Everlast embraced after leaving hip hop trio House of Pain, being a combination of rock, hip-hop and blues incorporating characterization and empathy towards impoverished protagonists. The song went to number one on the US BillboardMainstream Rock chart for one week and number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart for nine weeks. It also peaked at number 13 on the BillboardHot 100, becoming the singer's only solo top 40hit on the US chart to date. Outside the United States, the song reached number four in Iceland, number six in Canada and the top 30 in Australia, Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
Song structure
Structurally, the song consists of three verses, a chorus, and a bridge. The last line of the chorus varies in accordance with the particular situation faced by the character in the preceding verse. Each character is presented in a sympathetic light as a victim of circumstance and as being an object of derision. Each verse ends with the line God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his/her shoes and Cause then you really might know what it's like to, with the action varying depending on what the character has to do. The characters are:
A beggar ; when asking for change from a man he's turned down rudely
Mary, a pregnant girl who decides to have an abortion ; when she goes through the door of the clinic, she gets called a "killer," a "sinner," and a "whore."
The speaker attempts to build sympathy for each character's struggle through the phrase "God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his/her shoes, 'cause then you really might know what it's like". The cause of the first character's lifestyle as a beggar is presented as irrelevant.
Music video
The music video was directed by Frank Sacramento in Los Angeles. Everlast is shown singing underwater while the characters drown. Later they are crowded around a window behind which an idyllic family is enjoying dinner, oblivious to the less fortunate who are outside.
