VINTAGE singer, songwriter and composer Melissa Hollick has come up with a very special way of marking VE Day.
Next Friday is May 8 – the 75th anniversary day of remembrance of the ending of the Second World War in Europe – but all the events marking the historic occasion have all but been cancelled due to coronavirus.
The cancellations include the numerous concerts the Alcester singer had been booked to perform in, on and around the big day.
Undaunted, Melissa has taken the fourth stanza from Laurence Binyon’s famous 1914 war poem ‘For The Fallen’ and used it as inspiration to compose a song in tribute, not only to VE Day, but to those who have lost their lives in the pandemic.
“All my concerts around May 8 were cancelled but I had Laurence Binyon’s poem in my head and realised nobody had done a song around it.
“I started writing a melody on the piano, then added some strings and brass and it went from there.”
She added: “I feel like I was born in the wrong era, I just love those old time songs.
“The wartime songs but also Elvis, Connie Francis and Frank Sinatra, they could sing about love in such a lovely way.”
The fourth stanza of Binyon’s poem reads:
‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.’
The song, ‘We Will Remember Them’ is available on all major platforms and 50 per cent of all download sales will go to the Royal British Legion.
For the video, visit https://youtu.be/5hkGmKWOpQQ. For more on Melissa, visit www.melissahollickvintagesinger.co.uk.
