Nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time. It’s easy.
All you need is love. All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

Ok, so this is demonstrably untrue.

There are many things you need in addition to love.

1. Oxygen

This is the big one. The body requires oxygen as a kind of combustion source to break down food into energy. Without oxygen your brain cells start to die off pretty quickly (other cells in the body not so much). So that’s pretty important.

I guess you could also add ‘respiration’ in general to this. The act of breathing is also about removing carbon dioxide from your body. You don’t want that hanging around or I guess you’d just suffocate. So yeah, Beatles, BREATHING is really important. Y’all not gonna mention that?

2. Food

Can’t get energy if you’re not eating! Food is our energy source, and is required to literally fuel our lives. I guess you can technically remain alive without eating (we do it daily between meals), but you’re not gonna last more than a few days if you go entirely without.

People have reported living for up to two months without food. But you do get really, really hungry. So I wouldn’t really even call that living. You need to eat.

3. Water

Ah, water. Now water you can’t go without for more than a few days. The body is constantly using up water for all kinds of things; sweating, respiring, that kind of stuff. They say our bodies are about 50-60% water, but I don’t know where it is. I guess in the feet or something. I dunno. But you need water.

4. Warmth

Get too hot and you’ll burn; too cold and you’ll freeze. I know right, it sucks. You’re only ever a couple of tens of degrees away from certain death.

It gets worse. The human body temperature is a steady 37C. But if that drops to just 35C you’ve got hypothermia and bits of you will start falling off. Upwards, between just 37.5C and 38.3C is considered hyperthermia. You’ll start feeling dizzy, your heart will go nuts, and you’ll generally just have a bad time. Then you die.

So when I say ‘warmth’, I really just mean a nice stable temperature that doesn’t change too much.

5. Sleep

God only knows why we sleep. Something to do with the body needing to recharge, or the mind having to process stuff. Anyway, we gotta do it.

The record for going without sleep is somewhere between 11-18 days. But you’re not really having a good time. Sleep, guys.

6. A functioning immune system

Yeah, there’s lots of bug and microbes out there constantly trying to kill you. So if you’re immune system isn’t up to scratch you won’t last long. This is why auto-immune or immune deficiency diseases are so rough. Even a common cold can wreak havoc.


And that’s about it, I guess. And you don’t even need love. Many people live without love, so we can remove that from the list.

Let’s return to the song.

Nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time. It’s easy.
All you need is oxygen, food, water, warmth, sleep, and a functioning immune system.
All you need is oxygen, food, water, warmth, sleep, and a functioning immune system.
All you need is oxygen, food, water, warmth, sleep, and a functioning immune system, oxygen, food, water, warmth, sleep, and a functioning immune system.
Oxygen, food, water, warmth, sleep, and a functioning immune system is all you need.

Much better.