Lyrics of Love & Light Leading the Fight

MLK weekend 2021. After a year we had and a January that feels like a part two of 2020 King’s messages have never been more important. The hate, darkness, and division in the nation are really high. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that” - Martin Luther King Jr. To be able to handle watching the news these days I like to turn to songs of hope, songs with important messages that remind me of the love and the light we need so much more of.

Dear Hate by Maren Morris featuring Vince Gill is a letter to hate clearly saying love is going to conquer all. Each verse is a different national tragedy that was driven by hate. Morris released the song after the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting in Las Vegas. The song ends with an ode to love: dear love just when I think you’ve given up/you still whisper down through history and echo through these halls/and tell me love’s gonna conquer all.

Jackboot Jump by Hozier is a song I wouldn’t have expected to understand or feel like it hit so close to home, until the Capitol of the United States was breached just last week. Each verse of the song mentions places where uprisings for change are squashed in Moscow, Hong Kong, or Beijing. What we witnessed on January 6th, 2021 unfortunately was not a normal protest but an event that will make history. It was an insurrection by a group of individuals who refused to accept the results of the most central part of a republic: the democratic election. The jackboot only jumps down on people standing up/so you know good things are happening when the jackboot needs to jump. In this case the opposite is happening, our national guard needs to step up in order to ensure a safe inauguration on the 20th to the people attending and the new administration getting sworn in. Good things ARE happening, we just need extra security to protect from the hate against the change that is coming.

One of the biggest changes with this new administration is our first female, first black, and first South Asian Vice President Kamala Harris. Mickey Guyton’s song Black Like Me was a very important song during the BLM protests this past summer. Her other song off her EP Bridges What Are You Gonna Tell Her is also a very important message to young women growing up in a still very sexist and racist society. What are you gonna tell her when she’s wrong? Will you just shrug and say it's been that way all along? Do you just let her pretend she can be president? Well, with Kamala in such a seat of power it is a little more encouraging and a first step for the marginalized groups in this country. As Kamala has said “While I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”

Survivin' by Bastille, a band always coming up with the perfect song to describe the times. I’m not gonna lie, say I’ve been alright/ cause it feels like I’ve been living upside down/ what can I say? I’m survivin’. 2020 has turned us upside down and we made it to 2021, but all I can do is repeat after Bastille: I think I’ll be fine. So many unprecedented times it can make your head spin, but let’s keep surviving.

There’s been a lot of darkness the past year, but there are still spots of light to look for. Jillian Jacqueline puts it perfectly in her song Wait for the Light. There’s babies being born and people falling in love/ trees are growing old and birds are still singing/ and some are waking up/ some are laying down/underneath the same sky. Throughout the pandemic you have millions getting sick, hundreds of thousands not waking up, but others recovering and even having babies. It is all happening simultaneously. The good and the bad, the dark and the light, we are all trying to get by and wait for the light. It is a small world, where isolation and social distancing can make it seem even smaller. So when I listen to Wait for the Light and hear the lines it can be so hard to get through a long night/ if you feel lost on your own street come and find me and we can wait for the light, it reminds me that we need our support systems more than ever to get through the darkness.

I opened with Maren Morris and now I am going to close with her most recent words of wisdom. It is not enough just to survive as Bastille says or just wait for the light with Jillian Jacqueline and other strangers in need. Maren Morris poses the right question we need to be asking ourselves: Will we sit on our hands, do nothing about it/ Or will we leave this world better than we found it? It is not enough just to be quoting MLK, but we need to be living by his words. Better Than We Found It is a plea to America. America, America/ divided we fall/ save us all from the Hell we built for our kids/ America, America we’re better than this.