Joss Stone has returned with a new soulful single, “Walk With Me,” released Friday alongside its music video. It’s her first new single in three years, and perhaps a harbinger of her first proper album since 2015, when her acclaimed seventh studio album Water for Your Soul was released.
Stone says of “Walk With Me”:
The song started out as a romantic song asking someone to walk through life with you, kind of like a wedding song if you will. When we got to working on it so much had happened that I couldn’t take my mind off. With the pandemic and what happened with George Floyd that unfortunately sparked so much violence it got me thinking that the problem is mostly with the us and them attitude. That is the biggest killer – separation and judgement. Everyone needs to come together in order to survive this life in peace. Without togetherness nothing is OK.
So I rewrote the song and I hope people take it in the way it was intended. When I speak of the “heroes,” I am speaking of the brave doctors and nurses that have given so much of their lives to help others have one. And when I speak of “our brothers and sisters that cannot breathe,” it is a reference to George Floyd and the many others who have suffered injustice and suffocation in any way, be that physical or emotional. When I say “so take a hand,” I mean any hand, love everyone, we are in this life together. The only way things will get better is if we throw the divides and lines away and love each other regardless of colour or job or health. The fix is not to make those lines thicker. Let’s walk together. Through it all.
In July, Stone launched her new podcast, A Cuppa Happy, where she interviews guests ranging from British comedian Bill Bailey and sex therapist Laura Berman to recording artists Shaggy and Boy George. She has also been on Facebook Live every Sunday for Cooking With Joss, a raw and humorous interactive cooking show.
Watch the video for “Walk With Me” below, and while you’re here, keep scrolling to revisit a clip from Stone’s 2015 Paste Studio session.
