The Story Behind Beauty Almost Anywhere
This song came from a family road trip across Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and back into California. For long stretches, the landscape looked dry, empty, and almost inhospitable. Then the light changed.
Storms gathered in the distance, the evening colors deepened, shadows stretched across the hills, and things I would normally have driven past without a second thought suddenly looked beautiful. That stayed with me. I started thinking about how much of what we call beautiful depends on timing, weather, light, season, and whether we are paying attention.
I was also listening to a lot of my own music during the drive, including songs tied to people, places, and earlier memories. That gave the trip another layer. Roads became connected to songs, songs became connected to people, and the miles home started feeling less like empty distance and more like part of a story.
Beauty Almost Anywhere came out of that realization. Some places reveal themselves immediately. Others need a storm, a sunset, a season, or simply the right moment.
Fun Fact
The cover started with a photograph I took on an earlier western road trip. I wanted the artwork to come from the same kind of landscape and changing light that inspired the song itself.
Creative Notes
The song started closer to a conventional coming-home road song, but I kept pulling it back toward the larger idea that had stayed with me from the drive: ordinary and even unattractive things can become beautiful under the right conditions.
I tightened the writing toward a more typical RoyRoy Genkins feel, with stronger rhyme, simpler phrasing, and a direct repeating chorus. I also cut material that was doing too much literal storytelling so the song could move more naturally between road-trip detail and reflection.
For the artwork, I used one of my own landscape photographs as the visual foundation and pushed it toward the worn, vintage RoyRoy presentation. I removed the extra bottom tagline in the final cover direction so the image, artist name, and title could carry the design.
Lyrics
Listen & Follow
Play the song while you follow the lyrics.
We pointed west through Wyoming skies Three long roads and tired eyes Chasing miles beneath the sun Heading home where summer’s begun
Most of the country looked dried out Dust and distance all around Nevada stretched for days and days Brown and faded, sunburned plains
Thought I knew what all that meant Broken land and emptiness But evening storms rolled drifting through And slowly changed my point of view
You can find beauty almost anywhere Given the right light hanging in the air Even old deserts start shining gold Even lonely places don’t feel cold
Long shadows dancing over rust and stone Turning strange highways into something known Maybe this whole world’s been beautiful all along We just catch it for a moment, then it’s gone
Transmission towers caught the sun Silver burning one by one Black old buildings far away Looked like worlds from yesterday
Mining rigs and weathered steel Half sci-fi, half too real Clouds rolled low against the hills Everything went quiet, still
Two trucks blocking both the lanes Whole line backed for miles again We started laughing, making jokes Till they drifted way too close
You can find beauty almost anywhere Given the right light hanging in the air Even old deserts start shining gold Even lonely places don’t feel cold
Long shadows stretching over dust and stone Making far-off places feel like home Maybe this whole world’s been beautiful all along We just catch it for a moment, then it’s gone
Wyoming green from late spring snow Days before it barely showed Miracles hide in sudden showers Turning dust to fields of flowers
Then the Sierras called through moist air My sacred ground, my refuge, always there Hearing songs tied to these roads Made old memories overflow
When you told me you loved that song Those words connected us where we belong Goosebumps rolling late at night Somewhere underneath those starlit skies
You can find beauty almost anywhere In transmission lines and weathered air In desert blooms and mountain homes In all the miles between where we roam
Three of us chasing fading light Through long roads and starlit sights Maybe this whole world’s been trying to say Everything becomes beautiful one day
And somewhere out past the fading sun The whole world and I became one
Credits
- Songwriter
- Joe Hackman
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