English rock legend Pink Floyd is back together all for a good cause. The band released a single titled ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ on Thursday (April 7), amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
This is their first single in the last 28 years. According to people.com, founding member and drummer Nick Mason with guitarist David Gilmour, longtime Pink Floyd collaborator and bassist Guy Pratt and keyboardist Nitin Sawhney collaborated on the project. The money earned from the single will be spent for humanitarian relief in Ukraine.
Gilmour, 76, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren put out a statement talking about the same. He said, “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.”
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The single also has the vocals of Ukrainian band Boombox’s Andriy Khlyvnyuk. This was taken from a recent Instagram video of him singing the Ukrainian protest song, ‘Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow’, in Kyiv's Sofiyskaya Square. The last line of that song translates to ‘hey hey rise up and rejoice,’ which is where the title of the Pink Floyd song comes from.
According to reports, Khlyvnyuk left Boombox's U.S. tour and returned to Ukraine and joined the Territorial Defense Forces. He is recovering from a shrapnel injury at the moment. Talking about the number on his Instagram page, Gilmour said, “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."
