Musician Van Morrison, best known for songs like “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Domino” and “Wild Night,” and for seminal albums “Moondance” and “Astral Weeks,” is set to release three songs protesting the U.K. lockdown.
First up is “Born to Be Free,” out Sept. 25, followed by “As I Walked Out” on Oct. 9, and “No More Lockdown” on Oct. 23.
Morrison’s lyrics are straightforward. In “Born to Be Free,” he sings: “The new normal, is not normal/It’s no kind of normal at all/Everyone seems to have amnesia/Don’t need the government cramping my style/Give them an inch, they take a mile.”
“As I Walked Out” features the lines: “Well, on the government website from the 21st March 2020/It said COVID-19 was no longer high risk/Then two days later/They put us under lockdown.”
“No more taking of our freedom/And our God given rights/Pretending it’s for our safety/When it’s really to enslave.”
“I’m not telling people what to do or think, the government is doing a great job of that already,” Morrison said in a statement announcing the songs. “It’s about freedom of choice, I believe people should have the right to think for themselves.”
In early September, Morrison played some socially distanced gigs at Newcastle Upon Tyne and London. In August, he had posted a statement on his official website that read: “This is not a sign of compliance or acceptance of the current state of affairs, this is to get my band up and running and out of the doldrums. This is also not the answer going forward. We need to be playing to full capacity audiences going forward.”
(Excerpt) Read more in: Variety