When we did our podcast, Hannah said that she never stopped writing songs. Let’s hope she doesn’t. If you’re a full-time live performer you can keep adding them into the repertoire to see which ones resonate with the audience – but that’s not practicable for Hannah this year.
Following the national TV and press coverage of their successful crowdfunding campaign to keep the doors open at their great venue (The Sound Lounge), it’s no secret that Hannah and husband Keiron have their hands full with their primary occupations.
Thus alas, Hannah is not able to perform as many shows as she would like to for the foreseeable future and that raises the question of how to deliver new songs to fans.
So between us, we’re going to keep you supplied with these sublime songs and here’s how we’re going to do it. Instead of releasing another album in quick succession to the five already in circulation, we’ve decided on a different approach.
The Last Music Company is going to releases twelve songs as single digital releases over the course of the next year. Think of it as a musical calendar.
And what better day to launch the first one than International Women’s Day on March 8th 2024 when appropriately, we start off our campaign with Hannah’s deeply touching “Mother You Are”.
"This, for me, is probably the saddest song I've ever written," says Hannah, unerringly truthful to her songwriting instincts as always. "It's a song about what is brushed away into unseen corners when we sentimentalise, mystify and romanticise motherhood as we do; and when women are expected to focus on happy-talk and notions of the 'natural' and 'blissful.'
"It's about the barriers faced by new mothers who experience fear, sadness or other negative emotions and the shame that comes from talking about them – usually resulting in a medical diagnosis of 'post-natal depression' and treated pharmaceutically until the 'natural' state of maternal bliss is restored.
"When I found out I was pregnant it felt like the end of the world. My body, my friends, my work, my hopes and life as I knew it all dissolved beneath me. It felt like I had no choices anymore. I was absolutely terrified and totally alone. I wish we were allowed to tell the truth without being socially outcast. This song is an expression of all of the above.
"PS - I love my children."
I have printed the lyrics below. The single cover art was sketched by Hannah’s daughter Molly MacAdam.
Join Hannah’s social media for news of the next eleven releases.
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MOTHER YOU ARE. Words and music by Hannah White. Published by The Last Music Company Limited.
It’s a restless wind when it’s blowing
Away any fragment of truth
Obscuring an ode to the unspoken
A song for ancestors to youth
Oh mother you are
Mother you will
Whether by chance, by force or careful
Plan or design
No business of mine
But there’ll be no change of mind in the morning
No change of mind in the morning
A world of tongues all resisting
A song too sorrowful to bear
A fine, fine idea persisting
Fertile and flying through the air
Oh mother you are
Mother you will
Whether by chance, by force or careful
Plan or design
No business of mine
But there’ll be no change of mind in the morning
No change of mind in the morning
Alone in the morning
Alone in the evening
Alone in the morning
Alone, alone
Mother you are
Mother you will
Whether by chance, by force or careful
Plan or design
No business of mine
But there’ll be no change of mind in the morning
No change of mind in the morning
