Fray song commemorates Rwanda

THE Fray’s new song ‘Heartbeat’ seems to be about reviving a broken relationship, with lyrics like ‘I wanna kiss your scars tonight’, and ‘baby, you gotta try, you gotta let me in.’But the inspiration for the rock tune has little to do with a failed romance. Instead, it comes from one of the worst tragedies in recent memory — the Genocide in Rwanda.Lead singer and writer Isaac Slade was visiting the Rwandan capital of Kigali last year when he found himself standing on the site where more than 250,000 victims of the country’s 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi were buried. Then he had an epiphany. “(I was) at this gathering with a bunch of local (people) and ex-pats, all standing in circle holding hands, just kind of thinking and talking about Rwanda. This girl was standing next to me and I couldn’t tell if it was her heartbeat or mine, but it felt like the country was getting its pulse back to it,” Slade remembers. “I busted out my phone and wrote that pre-chorus of this song called ‘Heartbeat’, and wrote some of the chorus on the way back,” he says.The song is on the band’s latest album, ‘Scars & Stories’. Producer Brendan O’Brien, known for his work with Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen and Rage Against the Machine, certainly helped shape the song and the rest of the album, said Joe King, the band’s guitarist and co-vocalist.“He pinned us on both sides, and that’s what we needed,” King said.Slade added: “Every album, so far, has been a snapshot of who we are and where we are. Here we are.”Both Slade and King feel the experiences that led up this album left them more mature.But then Slade added: “We’re mature, but certainly not that mature.”

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Fray song commemorates Rwanda