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Pink Floyd Release First New Song Since 1994 in Support of Ukraine

It's their first song without Richard Wright who died in 2008
Pink Floyd
Courtesy of Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd released a new song! Yes — you read that correctly — Pink Floyd! David Gilmour and Nick Mason (still no Roger Waters) have teamed up for a new song for the first time since the band’s 1994 Division Bell.

 

 

Titled “Hey Hey Rise Up,” the proceeds from the song will support Ukraine.

“I hope it will receive wide support and publicity,” Gilmour said in a statement. “We want to raise funds for humanitarian charities, and raise morale. We want to express our support for Ukraine and in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is totally wrong for a superpower to invade the independent democratic country that Ukraine has become.”

This is also the first Pink Floyd track without original keyboardist Richard Wright, who died in September 2008. And we still aren’t that surprised that original bassist Waters did not contribute to a Pink Floyd-related project these days, but the singer has supported Ukraine on his social media.

“Hey Hey Rise Up” also features long-time Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt, keyboardist Nitin Sawhney, and a vocal performance by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox.

Only recorded last Wednesday, March 30, the track uses Khlyvnyuk’s vocals taken from his Instagram post of him singing in Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square. The song’s title immortalized the final line of the Ukrainian protest song, “The Red Viburnum In The Meadow,” which was written during World War I.

Gilmour explains that he met Khlyvnyuk in 2015 in London when he was supporting the Belarus Free Theatre.

“Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian band, Boombox, were also on the bill,” Gilmour explains. “They were supposed to do their own set, but their singer Andriy had visa problems, so the rest of the band backed me for my set – we played ‘Wish You Were Here’ for Andriy that night. Recently I read that Andriy had left his American tour with Boombox, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Territorial Defense. Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war. It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.”

The Mat Whitecross-directed video for “Hey Hey Rise Up” was shot on the same day the track was recorded.

Gilmour has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren. “We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world’s major powers,” he says.