Toto’s “King of the World” is a dynamic and rocking track, but it was initially considered a throw-away and almost didn’t make the cut for 2006’s Falling in Between. The realization of this song is a lesson in the power of collaboration, and how art is often saved in the edit.
Writing credits for “King of the World” (Kimball / Lukather / Paich / S. Porcaro / Phillips / M. Porcaro) reveal a band approach, although the initial concepts must have come from David Paich.
“‘King of the World’ was previously titled ‘Den of Thieves’ or ‘Smoke and Mirrors,'” Paich said in the album liner notes. “It is about the fall of Enron as told from three perspectives: One being the man on the street (narrating), two being a low level worker, and the third being the Big Dog exec.”
This narrative structure provided the opportunity for Bobby Kimball, David Paich, and Steve Lukather to share lead vocal duties for the first time ever. If you’re following along at home, that’s David singing the verse as the man on the street, Steve providing the worker perspective in the pre-chorus, and Bobby belting out the chorus as the company executive.
What’s interesting, however, is the way this song was saved.
“This is a wildcard track that almost didn’t make it to the CD,” Lukather confirmed in the Falling in Between notes. “It started out as a whole other tune and we were going to use this as our bonus cut. We gave it to Steve Porcaro to tweak and he edited the whole thing, and then sent it back to us. It’s a whole different tune.” Paich agreed: “Steve Porcaro played a major role with creative editing, intros and dazzling effects.”
Meanwhile, Steve Porcaro displayed his usual self-effacing modesty about things. “The guys were very generous to give me a writing credit,” he later told Toto99. “All I did was take away the sections of the song that bothered me, that I thought were too much. And, you know, I think everyone in the band felt that way too. I put it together how I felt the song should go, which I was able to do so easily because of Pro Tools. Really all I did was remove some extra sections and made it a tighter song. And the guys wound up loving it.”
In the same interview, Lukather added: “There was no way we couldn’t give him a credit on ‘King of the World.’ He basically redid the whole song. It was a throw-away song. It almost didn’t make the record. We didn’t feel it was strong enough. We gave it to Steve, and he cut it to shreds, and basically rewrote the song.”
Along the way, “King of the World” became a wonderful example of how people can produce amazing results when given space to collaborate and create.
- Toto, “Spanish Sea” from ‘Old Is New’ (2018): Toto Tuesdays - June 15, 2021
- Toto, “Devil’s Tower” from ‘Old Is New’ (2018): Toto Tuesdays - May 11, 2021
- Toto, “Alone” from ‘Old Is New’ (2018): Toto Tuesdays - April 27, 2021
