Pink Floyd Debuts “Hey Hey Rise Up” ft. Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox, Benefiting the People of Ukraine

“Hey Hey Rise Up” is the title of a brand new song from Pink Floyd, released by the band on Thursday as a show of solidarity and support for the people of Ukraine.

Featuring vocals from Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox, the song sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by longtime Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt, with Nitin Sawhney on keyboards. It marks the first new original music recorded and released by Pink Floyd since 1994’s The Division Bell.

Some detailed back story about this recording and how it came about:

The track, recorded last Wednesday (March 30th), uses Andriy’s vocals taken from his Instagram post of him singing in Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square. The song itself ‘The Red Viburnum In The Meadow’ is a rousing Ukrainian protest song written during the first world war which has been taken up across the world over the past month in protest of the invasion of Ukraine. The title of the Pink Floyd track is taken from the last line of the song which translates as ‘Hey Hey Rise up and rejoice’.

 

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Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren says: “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”.

Gilmour explains how he came to know Andriy and his band Boombox. “In 2015, I played a show at Koko in London in support of the Belarus Free Theatre, whose members have been imprisoned. Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian band, Boombox, were also on the bill. 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.”

3/3 All proceeds from the song will go to Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief. https://t.co/i1l92D3AYU

— Pink Floyd (@pinkfloyd) April 7, 2022

While writing the music for the track, David managed to speak with Andriy from his hospital bed in Kyiv where he was recovering from a mortar shrapnel injury. “I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future.”

Speaking about the track Gilmour says, “I hope it will receive wide support and publicity. We want to raise funds for humanitarian charities, and raise morale. We want 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.”