Pink Floyd Release New Song “Hey Hey Rise Up”

After 28 years, Pink Floyd has released a new original song titled “Hey Hey Rise Up,” in support of the people of Ukraine. It marks as the band’s first music material since 1994’s The Division Bell.

In nearly three decades, the band’s surviving members David Gilmour, Nick Mason, along with bassist Guy Pratt and keyboardist Nitin Sawhney, reunited to record this protest song against the Ukraine war. “Hey Hey, Rise Up” also features the vocals of Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the Ukrainian band Boombox.

Andriy’s part was taken from his Instagram post of him in Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square singing “The Red Viburnum In The Meadow,” a Ukrainian protest song written during the first world war. The last line of the song translates to “Hey, hey, rise up and rejoice,” which inspired the title of the new Pink Floyd track.

Singer Andriy returned to his homeland and turned into a soldier to defend his country from Russia’s invasion. In an interview with Rolling Stone he said:

“[The West] needs us as the shield to protect it all.”

While Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren, said in a statement:

“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.”

In 2015, Khlyvnyuk was supposed to perform for Gilmour in a show in London in support of the Belarus Free Theatre. Sadly, Khlyvnyuk couldn’t make the show due to visa problems, so the so the rest of Boombox backed Gilmour for his set instead.

Gilmour explained:

“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.”

Stream Pink Floyd’s new song below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cae5TydPAxh/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=164a4fe7-1f11-45df-a2e8-f676f5f5d966