“Why Can't We Be Friends”

The seven members of War wrote it together with their producer, Jerry Goldstein, and each man in the band sings a verse of his own. It came out in April 1975 as the title song of their album and reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 that summer. That July, when an American Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz linked up in orbit, the song was beamed up to the astronauts and cosmonauts, a friendly hello from Earth. More than twenty years later, Smash Mouth brought it to a new generation, releasing their version as a single in 1998. It has been a gentle call for getting along ever since.