While other songs from 1988’s Scenes from the Southside are described as short stories set in the South, “Look Out Any Window” is more like a critical essay about the devastating effects industrial greed has on the environment. The narrator denounces this pollution and waste while simultaneously calling attention to the inequality between the “man working in the fields” seeing the effects of air pollution and acid rain on his crop and the “men too busy getting rich to care” that their factories and coal plants are choking up the air and harming the land.

The song peaked at number 35 on the Billboard music charts. While it failed to achieve the commercial success of “The Way It Is,” the song is true to Hornsby’s prosaic songwriting approach and showcases a keen sense of story evident in his other music with The Range.

Ultimately the song is a simple plea to both those in authority and the average man or woman of the time: to pay attention to the devastation and exploitation of our climate and your fellow human beings, to challenge those who seek to abuse the planet for profit, and to make caring for our world a priority.