“More Love,” vocalist/violinist Lili Haydn’s new single from her forthcoming album of the same name name, reminds me of the Scorpions’ ode to the fall of communism, “Winds of Change.” No, I don’t think the CIA wrote Haydn’s latest single. It does however have a very similar hook despite a very different arrangement. It is also a song that comes at a moment of optimism in our world. Just as the Scorpions captured the brightness as we came out of the Cold War, so Haydn does the same as we find hope that vaccines will dispel the darkness of the pandemic. In both cases, there is that period of hope not only that the worst is over, but that we have learned something in the process. In different times, both songs could seem like trite, Pollyanna views of the world, but in their time, they work.
Significantly, Haydn sticks to some pop conventions, but adds some dimension to them particularly with her violin. Like the brokenness that we all have, the song has moments of dissonance that ground its optimism in a way that makes it both more musically interesting and more emotionally tangible.
Haydn gives us a song about coming from our broken world with our broken selves and finding gratitude, light and love. I hope she’s right.
Just curious: did you intentionally not mention the themes of social justice that lie immediately beneath the surface of the pandemic themes, or am I seeing something that I want to see but it’s not really there?
I can see the social justice themes alluded to in the video, but not as much in the song itself aside from the “we’re in this together” theme. Perhaps I was too hung up on hearing ghosts of Scorpions songs though!