For a song all about living in and seizing the moment, there really was no other option than to film a live performance video for Leo Sawikin’s ‘A Whole World Waiting’.
A folk rock song akin to the likes of Brian Wilson or Carole King, Leo’s songwriting pitches himself and his songs as the antidote to a fast-paced modern life, someone who encourages the listener to slow down and look around at what’s already there. Despite being inspired by Sawikin’s anxiety from which he suffers, the song doesn’t dwell on the negative and instead accepts this kaleidoscope of emotions as part of life, encouraging us to weather through the storm.
“It’s this feeling that you’ve missed out on the best the world has to offer, and just the pervading sense that things are getting more difficult in the world – and every attending emotion that goes along with it,” Leo says. “It’s kind of like letting go of that and trying to figure out what you do after everything falls apart. When I wrote these songs, they were about the way my friends and I were thinking, that the world we think we have is not going to last long. We were thinking more in terms of issues like climate change or the political divisiveness, but the pandemic, which none of us expected, gives the songs more power. We’re already starting to live that new reality where you can’t turn your back for a second. In the old world, we could distract ourselves with our day to day lives, but now we’re forced to stare down just how fragile everything is.”