In his introduction to the song "We Don't Need No Colour Code" at Cornerstone 2003, Steve said,

"This is actually a song about Africa.  I know sometimes when we hear about Africa, someone thinks, 'Oh, great, it's going to be another depressing song'.  And in a lot of cases, you would be right.  Coming from Africa, the news has not been so good lately, as you know.  The plight of AIDS has ravaged the countryside.  By 2010, if we don't act, there could be 25 million AIDS orphans.  Things are very grim.  A couple of years ago, I went with Compassion - my wife and I went to Africa, and we saw a lot of things there first-hand.  In the midst of the joys of meeting our sponsored child, and going on and sponsoring four more after that trip, which I'd highly recommend all of you doing, if you get a chance to go see Compassion.  We were able to make a difference in the lives of some children, but, at the same time, the plight there is just overwhelming.

When I wrote this next song 20 years ago, there was a lot to be discouraged about.  Apartheid was the rule of the law in South Africa, and it was unfortunately supported by the majority of white Christian churches.  And over in our country, a Christian college called Bob Jones University actually had a policy in the student manual prohibiting interracial dating among students.  And I gotta admit, I wrote this song because at the time I was thinking, 'you know, I don't know if things are ever going to get any better.  I mean, we hope and we write songs and stuff.  But who knows?'  I think sometimes we forget that when we follow Jesus' commands and do what He tells us to do, things can actually get better in this world. In the last year, a lot of you have been calling your Senators and your Congressmen on behalf of AIDS in Africa.  And I believe that with the help of a lot of you, President Bush has, in his State of the Union address, announced a 15 billion dollar AIDS package for Africa.  And Bono and a lot of people up in Washington DC have gone on record as crediting a lot of the Christian community for making that happen, for calling people and pushing that forward.  So I want to thank all of you for that.

And I want to ask you for one more thing.  Tonight, afterwards, I'm going to hang out of there and be happy to meet all of you.  But I'm going to ask you to sign a letter, a pledge, that says now that President Bush has pledged 15 billion dollars and the congress has approved it, now it's got to go through some sort of appropriations committee, and it's being stuck up there.  And so we need you to make one more round of calls to your Senators and Congressmen, tell them we support the President's package.  We want so see AIDS in Africa ended in our lifetime.  And so I'm going to ask you to sign up over there, if you would, after the concert, all right?  Because I believe that we can see, in our lifetime, things happen and things actually get better.  And the proof of it is in this next song.  Because now, 20 years later, there is no apartheid in South Africa.  And, believe it or not, there is no policy against interracial dating anymore at Bob Jones.  They knocked it off a few years ago.  So this is a celebration song, a celebration of irrelevance in songwriting.

This is "We Don't Need No Colour Code"

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