A new song for East Sussex celebrates power of music to bring us together

It comes as part of the project A Song for Us which celebrates our communities and the power of music to bring us together.

Brighton band Normanton Street created the song The Last Time I Held You, taking their inspiration from the people of East Sussex.

The stream will feature Bobbie Johnson, AFLO. the poet and Varndean School Choirs. You can watch it streamed live on the Brighton Dome website.

The verses see rapper Bobbie Johnson and poet AFLO. the poet explore the feelings of loss, loneliness, worry and hope that the people of Sussex felt during lockdown. The chorus sees vocalist Phoebe Freya longing to hold loved ones again, singing alongside Varndean School Choirs. 

A nationwide project, A Song for Us commissions leading music creators across genres to write new songs inspired by the people of their county. These commissioned songs form part of a growing music map of the country to mark this historic time.

Ned Archibong, from Normanton Street, said: “We were approached by Brighton Dome to write this song reflecting the mood of the city during the lockdown and I thought it was a great idea. It was interesting. They did a survey of local feelings. Some people felt fear but there were other people that felt they had a chance to work on projects that they wanted to do.

Brighton Dome sent out a questionnaire on their website or through their social media, and some people, it seems, felt that there was light at the end of the tunnel but a lot of other people felt a lot of stress. It was quite a precarious situation with people losing loved ones but some people had the ability to find hope.

“The questionnaire was done by Brighton Dome and I don’t know how many responses they had but they gave us a pool of answers and that’s what we used, and the big reveal is going to be the live stream. We will be performing from Brighton Dome. I think there will be a few tickets for people to be there, I don’t know yet, but basically it’s going to be empty and it is going to be just the one song that we do.”

The hope is to release it as a single: “It was written for this project specifically but since then we have really grown to love the song and it will be part of our repertoire that we perform though not with the choir, obviously. It will become part of what we do.

“What this song means to me is that we’re coming together with different voices and reflecting, but it is a song of hope. Hopefully the song is not too much of a sad song. We were wanting to find the hope in the energy of the song as we reflected what people felt.”