Last month saw the release of The Beautiful & The Actual, the first full-length solo album from Wiltshire-based folk singer Rosie Hood who was a Horizon Award nominee at the Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2016. The album features both old and new songs and features musicians such as Ollie King and guest vocalists in the form of Folk Singer of the Year nominee Emily Portman.
The sparse arrangements allow Rosie’s vocals to shine all the brighter as she effortlessly taps into the emotion of a song and carries it. This is evident throughout The Beautiful & The Actual but none more so than on the powerful Adrift, Adrift (our Song of the Day). The video, which is premiered below, was made by Elly Lucas and filmed in Sheffield. It perfectly captures the song’s theme of human displacement. Although, as Rosies explains below, the song draws focus on “displaced people travelling between countries,” the words could equally apply to the homeless or those cut adrift moving from one property to another with no permanent home, the outfall from generation rent and a failing system.
Rosie shared the following on the song and video:
“I started writing this song in early 2015 when I read about the Ezadeen and Blue Sky M in the news – 2 large ships that had been abandoned in the Mediterranean Sea carrying hundreds of Syrians fleeing the civil war. Each person on board had paid around £4,000 to reach Europe on the ships that the crews then set to auto-pilot, risking them running aground, and abandoned them.
The song isn’t only about being physically adrift on the sea, but also of displaced people travelling between countries, drifting through the system, never having somewhere permanent.
My videographer Elly Lucas came up with the concept of the video, focusing on the human movement and displacement. We filmed it around my home town of Sheffield at the beginning of June, and I’m so pleased to be able to share it with you all.”
Photo Credit: Louise Bichan