[Verse 1 Warm soul sample with library ambience] Steel made his fortune then the vision grew broader Carnegie said knowledge should flow like water Eighteen eighty one put a pledge on the line Cities kept them running and he funded design Two thousand five hundred nine worldwide Sixteen eighty one on the United States side Every state saw free libraries grow Put a world on the shelf where the public could go No private ticket no wealthy last name Walk through the doorway and enter the game Knowledge for everyone ready to share A library made opportunity fair [Chorus Soulful vocals over boom bap drums] Read all about it Words got power Page by page Hour by hour Open a book Open your mind Read your world Then write your time Ink in your hand Voice in your name Literacy gives you A place in the game Read all about it Words got power [Verse 2 Typewriter rhythm enters] Writers got real when the century turned Put life on the page with the lessons they learned Realism showed how the world really moved Regionalism gave every place its own groove Mark Twain made Mississippi stories feel near Humor and hometown voices rang clear Stephen Crane wrote slums and the Civil War strain Edith Wharton wrote privilege pleasure and pain Paul Laurence Dunbar gave Black voices sound Poems and folktales spread his name around Jack London took readers where wild winds blew Miners and hunters made the far Northwest new Different lives finally filled every line America red itself one page at a time [Chorus Soulful vocals over boom bap drums] Read all about it Words got power Page by page Hour by hour Open a book Open your mind Read your world Then write your time Ink in your hand Voice in your name Literacy gives you A place in the game Read all about it Words got power [Verse 3 Printing press beat with urgent flow] New printing power put the presses on blast Paper and messages started moving fast Daily editions could reach every street Headlines and news made the city complete Pulitzer bought the World in eighty three One million daily readers checking the scene Hearst made the Morning Journal compete Bolder big stories kept sales on repeat Headlines got louder when the race got tight Some facts got stretched just to catch every eye Yellow Kid comics gave the style its name Yellow journalism changed the newspaper game Information moved like a citywide wave What people could read shaped choices they made [Bridge Multilingual vocals over magazine page flips] Ethnic newspapers spoke languages from home Kept communities linked when they felt alone News from the neighborhood voices in print Culture stayed strong through the language of ink Seven hundred magazines in sixty five Five thousand by nineteen hundred arrived Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, Ladies Home Journal Put a changing nation in pages eternal More people reading meant more could be heard Communities found their own power in words [Final Chorus Full choir with printing press percussion] Read all about it Words got power Page by page Hour by hour Open a book Open your mind Read your world Then write your time Read all about it Truth travels farther Read all about it Questions get sharper Open the pages Let knowledge shout Words change the world Read all about it [Outro Page turns beneath fading piano] Books in the library News in the street [Outro Page turns beneath fading piano] Books in the library News in the street Stories gave America A voice it could read
