The Portraits' 2018 'Anthem Of Unity'

Following the phenomenal response to The Portraits' tribute song to murdered MP Jo Cox, Nobody Can Ever Murder Love, which was championed by Clare Balding on BBC Radio 2, the duo are spending 2018 recording a follow-up single calling for national unity and are looking for voices up and down the country to take part. 

Lorraine and Jeremy wrote Nobody Can Ever Murder Love in the hours following Jo Cox’s death and performed it days later at 2016’s Glastonbury Festival after which an online video of the song went viral and led to an invitation to perform it live on Radio 2’s Good Morning Sunday. With their new project, they are undertaking a unique bid to collect and credit the voices of thousands of ordinary people up and down the UK singing a new song to heal the UK’s divisions. This latest idea was inspired partly by their 2014 'The Rest Of Time' project that led to the resulting song receiving national media coverage and a chart placement whilst encouraging the public to sign up as bone marrow donors.

“When we perform, we meet great people from all backgrounds and political viewpoints,” singer Lorraine Millington explains, “and without exception, people have shown that they’ve no time for prejudice or hatred in this country. Jo Cox’s mantra of ‘we have more in common than that which divides us’ really does ring true for most people. So we have set it to music, and we’re building a huge harmony of voices from all over the country: we’ve been recording our audiences singing different lines of the song and we’ll compile all the parts like a musical jigsaw at the end of the year to make the best song ever. It’ll be like a massive musical petition against division, and we’ll be naming each and every person who has taken part on the final single.”

We are looking for crowds of friends, workmates, football teams, choirs, builders, retirement home residents - you name it!! - to take part, and we will come to you. Invite us to wherever you gather normally, and we'll come, teach you the part, microphone in hand, and ask you to give us your name and contact details* so we can include your name amongst the thousands of other contributors when we release the final record. And if there's time, we'll throw in a free impromptu Portraits gig during your lunchtime or whenever we meet.

* Note: as per the new Data Protection Act, your contact details will be very carefully protected and most certainly not shared, and you can change your mind about your name being listed right up until the last minute prior to release.

If you are interested in taking part, contact us or get to one of our upcoming live dates, where we'll be recording the audience.
 

A first live draft of the song combined into a little lyric video.