The Prize
Released May 8, 2020
Played on BBC 6 Music by Huey Morgan, Lauren Laverne and Gideon Coe. Also featured by Lauren Laverne on 6 Music Recommends.
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The Prize is the second single from Aphelion – our third album due out later this year (we hope). It contains the very last sessions we recorded with people together in a room right before lockdown began. Brass was provided by the exquisite Horns for Hire led by Emma Johnson along with stalwart maestro Kieran O’Malley on violins. This is also our first track with a vocal singing a melody & lyrics throughout. We were going to release it later in the year once the album is finished but felt strongly that this was the time when people might need it the most.
”Absolutely loving this!” — Lauren Laverne (The Breakfast Show, BBC 6 Music)
The lyrics were inspired by both the American Civil Rights Movement and a friend who spent two years helping refugees on Lesbos. ‘Keep your eyes on the prize’ is a folk song used during the Civil Rights Movement that I picked up from a PBS documentary back in New York during my childhood. It means that we must keep struggling & enduring until everyone is truly equal. Underlying that phrase the song reminds us that we need to both embrace empathy and exercise critical thinking in all matters if we are to move forward. Teach our kids to have emotional intelligence and to ask questions. Stop allowing ourselves to be divided by gender, race, religion, culture or nationality because these are all devices under which men have been hiding their conquests for centuries, to paraphrase Hansberry.
I absolutely love the new single. It was 6 Music Recommends last night.
Thank you so much Ade!