Cancel Your Hopes (5/3/21)

by Laura Kidd

Release date: 5th March 2021
Label: My Big Sister Recordings

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ABOUT THE SONG

The song that took 15 years to write…sort of.

“Cancel Your Hopes” is about doing everything you were told was right and then realising the world’s going to end despite your best efforts. Left stranded by those who were once the grownups, our mission is to keep trying to appreciate the incredible fact of simply existing in this beautiful world, while attempting to navigate the toxic parts of technology, live a meaningful life of use to others, love deeply and learn to accept love, leaving as little negative trace on the planet as possible while doing so.

In June 2019 I spent several hours enjoying Radiohead’s “Minidiscs [Hacked]” – a collection of demos and live recordings released on Bandcamp after they were somehow stolen. The experience was very moving – intimate, almost too fly-on-the-wall nosey – and a handy reminder that even the greatest bands on the planet have to work to create their art.

I started to feel guilty for listening to someone else’s ideas archive when I had my own gathering dust in the corner of my studio. I started working through my own minidisc collection, listening through to snippets of ideas from my early days of writing, and was excited to come across a riff and chords idea from 2005 which became “Cancel Your Hopes”. I used the chorus melody from the original recording, wordless apart from the phrase “fucking beautiful”, which I also kept because it created such a key moment of intensity in that melodic line. I rarely swear in song, but sometimes there is no other option.

The same week, I’d finished having my mind blown apart by Barbara Kingsolver’s beautiful, devastating novel “Flight Behaviour”. While reading I’d scribbled copious notes: scraps of words and phrases that resonated with me from the book plus thoughts, feelings and phrases of my own sparked by her writing.

The music and words soon collided with a joyous bang.

When I was at school I remember teachers and the newspapers saying we were going to have to deal with the effects of global warming in 15 years time…then everything seemed to go quiet. It’s an understatement to say there is work to do, but I want to believe in a future for this messy, complicated, potentially wonderful species.

CREDITS

Written, produced, performed and recorded by Laura Kidd at The Launchpad, Bristol. Drums by Max Saidi. Mixed by Dan Austin. Mastered by Katie Tavini. Artwork by Alex Tillbrook, concept by Laura Kidd.

LYRICS

Cancel your hopes, dear
Do you remember when this was all fields?
Boys in the boardroom backslapping their deals
There’s a hole in our bucket, dear Liza – a hole

Walk the high wire with no mind for the crash
Are we in denial or do we crave collapse?
Can’t look strangers in the eye
Is that cos we are terrified?

Cos you know that we said forever
And you see that there’s nothing left
So let’s stand til we all fall over
Take my hand cos it’s so fucking beautiful

Cancel your hopes, please
The planet’s on fire while we’re stroking our screens
Buy better headphones to muffle their screams
There’s a hole in our bucket
And everyone knows

Walk the high wire with no mind for the crash
Are we in denial or do we crave collapse?
Won’t look strangers in the eye
Is that cos we are dead inside?

Cos you know that we said forever
And you see that there’s nothing left
So let’s stand til we all fall over
Take my hand cos it’s so fucking beautiful

Now I see that we’re going under
But I know that there’s nothing else
So as long as we stand together
Take my hand cos you’re so fucking beautiful

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Have a lovely day xo