On April 8, 2022, Pink Floyd are back after the official release of a new song, Hey Hey Rise Up, openly supporting the Ukrainian resistance against the invasion by Russia. The official video of the song is below.
The song was made in collaboration with Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the American rock band BoomBox. Andriy was on tour when the attack on Ukraine began, he interrupted the tour and returned to Ukraine to defend his nation. Once back, he posted a video in which he sang the song The Red Viburnum in the Meadow (Oi u luzi chervona kalyna), a traditional Ukrainian patriotic song. All this is explained at the beginning of the official video.
The lyrics of the song is therefore that of the patriotic Ukrainian song and represents a message of resistance against those who want to subjugate the Ukrainian people. You can find it below.
Oh, in the meadow a red viburnum has bent down low
For some reason, our glorious Ukraine is in sorrow
And we’ll take that red viburnum and we will raise it up
And we shall cheer for our glorious Ukraine, hey, hey
And we shall cheer for our glorious Ukraine, hey, hey
By turning a Ukrainian patriotic anthem into a new song, Pink Floyd’s position thus represents an open support on the side of Ukraine and its resistance. A clearer position than the one of former leader Roger Waters, who instead expressed some time ago on Facebook a more articulate reasoning, underlining how taking one side (any of them) still means playing the game of the warlords, whom he called “gangsters”.
