There’s A New Wind Blowin’ Through Here
When I released my debut single, Wake Up The World, in June 2020, I was on a bit of a mission to get my message heard and to try and influence people’s thinking at this extraordinary time in human history. It felt like too many people were ignoring the major warning signs of our time, such as climate change, COVID-19, and social unrest, and would rather sleepwalk into disaster than make the necessary changes to their lives that would ensure future prosperity for humans, the planet and its other inhabitants.
What I have realised in the months that have followed is that the cultural change that I was clamouring for is already underway. That doesn’t mean that we can all sit back and relax — the scale and urgency of the climate change threat requires that we all continue to fight for systemic, social, and cultural changes in an effort to preserve the natural world. But there’s been a significant shift in the zeitgeist and it now feels as if humankind is throwing off the shackles of the past and looking forward to a new era.
Of course, there are still a huge number of people stuck in the past, either reluctant to change their ways or unwilling to give up what they have. But increasing numbers of people across the globe are now starting to question the status quo, especially in light of the life-changing experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. The threat of the virus and the lockdowns that have accompanied it have forced people everywhere to change the way they live their lives, albeit temporarily. Whether we like it or not, this has given us all a glimpse of an alternative way of doing things.
Some people will be desperate to get back to their ‘old lives’ but most will find themselves changed in some way by the experiences of 2020. At the very least, we’ve all been shown that it’s perfectly possible to make significant changes to our lives if we need to. It’s no coincidence that major movements for change have intensified this year, from climate change to all sorts of social justice issues, and we’ve also witnessed a noticeable increase in the discussions of subjects relating to social change, from circular economies and universal basic income to indigenous ways of life and alternative forms of education. Once-niche ideas are now suddenly finding their way into the mainstream narrative.
What all of this says to me is that the world is moving into a new era, and that is the subject of my next single, New Wind. The old ways are on their way out. It’s hard to know how quickly this will happen, and how much further planetary damage will be caused in the meantime, but it feels like our long-term futures will be governed by a new way of thinking — one that is gradually seeping into our collective consciousness. More and more people are waking up to the idea that we don’t need to live our lives in the way we do and that things could be better for us and the other living beings on this planet if we do things differently.
“There’s a new wind blowin’ through here and it’s gonna keep building year on year.”
