For the first time in 28 years Pink Floyd releases poignant new song to raise money for Ukraine

Publish Date
Monday, 11 April 2022, 3:54PM

After nearly 30 years, Pink Floyd has released a poignant new song to raise money for the UN's Humanitarian Fund following the devastating attacks on Ukraine.

At midnight on Friday, the legendary band – minus Roger Waters – dropped 'Hey Hey Rise Up' which features the vocals of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, a Ukrainian singer who quit his band BoomBox's American tour to fight for his country with the Territorial Defence Forces and was wounded.

Guitarist and singer David Gilmour revealed he saw an Instagram video of the musician in military gear singing a protest song in Kyiv's Sofiyskaya Square and felt inspired to do something about it.

"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," Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren, said.

"I've got a big platform that [Pink Floyd] have worked on for all these years. It's a really difficult and frustrating thing to see this extraordinarily crazy, unjust attack by a major power on an independent, peaceful, democratic nation."

The song, which sees Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long time bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards, is the first new original music that Pink Floyd has recorded together as a band since 1994's The Division Bell.

While writing the music for the track, Gilmour managed to speak with Khlyvnyuk from his hospital bed in Kyiv where he was recovering from a mortar shrapnel injury.

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