On Thursday, August 31 Peter Gabriel releases the ninth track from the album i/o. The song is Love Can Heal and the first version to be heard is the Bright-Side Mix, by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent. Written and produced by Peter Gabriel, Love Can Heal is “A dreamy, experiential piece with some abstract imagery” says Gabriel, “a carpet of sound, a tapestry where things are woven together, but not necessarily supposed to stick out, but just form part of a whole”.
Love Can Heal has been performed during the recent i/o tour. It’s had its live premiere during Peter Gabriel and Sting’s Rock, Paper, Scissors tour of the North America of 2016. “Love Can Heal was written around 2016 and I did start playing it midway through the tour and dedicated it to Jo Cox, who was the British MP brutally murdered by an extremist and someone that I had met at a leadership conference. I think the song fits right in to the themes of the album in the sense that i/o is about feeling and being connected to everything and in a way, the next evolution of being connected to things is a feeling of love for everything”.
The song starts off with a theme of hopefulness. There is this optimism that tells the listener that they can overcome any obstacle. “Whatever mess, you find yourself within Regardless how you got there When the edifice has slipped away and died And left you standing there defenseless”. An angelic choir chants “love can heal” repeatedly.
Gabriel has commented on the visuals of the song; they represent two lovers in an embrace. In the music video, “Love can heal” continues to be chanted while the lovers appear to be traveling through the infinite universe. Artist Anthony Micallef comments on the visuals. “Putting the triangle in the triangle shape”. “Intimate tenderness”.
Gabriel describes the intimacy that the song presents. “There’s something coming out of you Your body and your skin Like mist comes from the water”. It describes this connection; not only with other people, but everything else. “You can sense it”, and “you face what’s coming”. The theme of nature becomes more prevalent in the song “I can breathe the air Out in the sunlight, in all the colors Set against, a bed of green a bed of green”. The song ends with the title being repeated.
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