SLS: We Need Each Other Now

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This week’s invitation to Song Lyric Sunday is to play a song that includes the act of depending, leaning, relying, or trusting another, as Jim tells us in his post, Recipe For Success. I might be stretching this just a bit, as the three songs I’m playing take that message in a wider context, not in the personal sense of a song like Bill Withers’ Lean On Me – an obvious choice for today, so I’m not going there!

I’m sharing some tunes from one of my favourite bands, one of which I played last year in a previous SLS piece, but I think it deserves another hearing. The band in question is Merry Hell, and just to change things a little I’m going with a different version from the one I played last time. This is We Need Each Other Now:

Merry Hell don’t seem to have reached the tentacles of genius.com, my go to lyrics source, but I did manage to find them on songlyrics.com. A worthy substitute!

Merry Hell formed in 2010, out of what remained of a previous band – The Tansads – and have at their core the three Kettle brothers, John, Andrew and Bob, as well as John’s wife Virginia. They have released eight albums to date, the most recent of which, Rising Of The Bold, came out in May 2025. They write their own songs, which are a mixture of stirring tunes with a social context plus several which display their collective sense of humour. John Kettle, to the left on this video, is their main songwriter, and this is one of his.

We Need Each Other Now was the opening track on their fourth album, Bloodlines, released in late 2016. It was written as a response to the UK’s referendum on the EU, which gave us Brexit. Like many, the band recognised that the Leave campaign based their approach on a mixture of hatred, xenophobia and lies, and the song is a call for the return of the country’s traditional values of inclusion, tolerance and decency, which had somehow got lost along the way. Their call for us to support each other was valid then, came to the fore again during the pandemic (when this video was made) and is needed ever more these days, with the party which has come out of that campaign making huge inroads in polls and elections with the same mix of tactics. You might think you have it bad in the US, guys, but it seems that the British public is doing its best to catch up. As I said at the outset, this isn’t a personal song, but we really do need to rely and depend on each other, and this says that so well. And our trust in each other, and in our politicians, is at an all time low just now.

My second Merry Hell song for today is When We Meet Again:

Fortunately that was a lyric video, as I can’t find them anywhere else! This is a song of hope for 2021 and beyond. Written by John and Bob Kettle during the second lockdown period of 2020, the band say that “it is born of those strange and difficult times but looks forward to the pleasures of being with the people whose company we enjoy, whether it be spending time with friends and family, or simply getting back to gigs and festivals and sharing our music and joy with audiences.” In addition to the band, the song features the combined voices of their 300 strong Social Isolation Choir, reflecting the theme of togetherness. All the members recorded their parts individually and submitted them remotely to the band, and “John Kettle then assembled everyone into a harmonious whole.”

This was one of many videos that came out of those strange times, in which separately recorded parts were combined to make a whole, and the spirit of that process is, I think, a very good example of how we need to rely on and trust in each other. The song was released as a single on 1 January 2021, backed with a couple of tracks from their recently released sixth album, Emergency Lullabies (November 2020). The album’s songs were very much of their time, and anyone who was around here in those days will remember the orchestrated ‘clap for the NHS’ sessions on Thursday evenings – for me, the height of the hypocrisy of Boris Johnson’s so-called government. Much better than those was this final song for today, which puts it into real words:

That was Beyond The Call, the lyrics for which can be found at songlyrics.com.

This was one of the songs from the Emergency Lullabies album which was on the When We Meet Again single. The song was first released to YouTube on 15 April 2020, a mere three weeks after we first went into lockdown, and the band’s YouTube page gives a very detailed description of how it came about and what it meant to them and everyone who took part:

“The night that the UK entered lockdown due to COVID-19, John wrote this song as he reflected on the situation. A demo version was shared on our Facebook page and the response was fabulous, so we decided to record a full band version – quite a technical challenge for some of us, as it had to be done remotely, rather than in the studio where everything could be controlled by John. As we talked about it, we decided that, based on the comments received, the song wasn’t just about our feelings but thoughts and concerns shared by so many, so we decided to open the song up to as many of those voices as we could. Over a weekend, we used our social media to invite friends and fans to record themselves singing along to the chorus (we even provided a tutorial) and send us their contributions. We collected all the files, added them to our own (including members of our own families) to produce ‘The Social Isolation Choir’ and The Key Workers Chorus’ – many of the contributions coming from people working on the front line. At the same time, we invited the singers to send in images of themselves and images of their loved ones who were working to keep us safe or to bring us back to health. These images were included in the accompanying video. About 150 voices were added to ours and we received many pictures of a whole lot of fabulous and dedicated people, nurses, doctors, care workers, delivery drivers, shop workers, radiographers, audiologists drafted in to support ward staff, members of all the emergency services and friends who are doing their bit however they can.”

If that isn’t a definition of the way that we need each other, to rely and trust, to depend and lean on, then I don’t know what is. I have watched the video many times in the past six years and it still brings a tear to my eyes. And if you ever needed proof that healthcare is something in which we all share, and isn’t something which should be there for commercial profit, I think the images in that video tell their own story.

That’s me done for today, and my thanks as always to Jim for hosting. See you again for Tuesday Tunes, I trust 👍

35 thoughts on “SLS: We Need Each Other Now”

  3. I enjoyed all of these, and especially the last one. It was a strange time for everyone and so many needed to be thanked, and not forgotten. I like how lots of people made videos separately and then put them together. 🙂

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    • I’m glad you liked them all. That last one is amazing, in how they wrote the song and compiled the video in just three weeks. The level of support they got shows how highly people think of our NHS.

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  6. Thank you for this Clive I really enjoyed this post. I really like Merry Hell and that’s all thanks to you… As you say their songs bring us together. 💜💜💜… if they don’t they should 💜💜💜

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    • They aren’t well known here, let alone over there! Very strong on our circuit of folk clubs and festivals, and always good value. I’m glad you enjoyed them 👍

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    • Thank you, Nancy, I’m glad you liked these. Merry Hell are a band I like a lot, and these three did feel very appropriate for today’s theme.

      Sorry for the delay in replying – no ‘like’ meant I didn’t get the prompt to fish you out of spam!

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  11. Great post Clive. It already feels like a long time ago and it was just six years past, and the videos are a reminder of what an awful time it was. I’m also grateful that myself and everyone I know came through it. The music of Merry Hell definitely helped, what wonderful songwriters they are.

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    • Thank you, Paul. These songs and videos are an important reminder for us of those days, and we should never forget those who were lost. You know better than most, from first hand, just how good Merry Hell are.

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  12. It is awful when the politicians that get elected cannot be trusted by the people who elected them, but such is the state of our world now. Thanks for sharing this collection of Merry Hell songs, as I enjoyed all of them. the music is very pleasant and the singing is glorious. The pandemic should have united all of us, but instead, it exposed and exacerbated deep political polarization, systemic inequalities, and widespread institutional distrust. Rather than fostering a shared global or national solidarity, the crisis highlighted how differently different communities experience and respond to public health emergencies. Thanks for sharing your music, Clive.

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  13. New to me too, but the last song in particular brings back a truly isolating and frankly terrifying time. Our friend worked (still does) in ICU and tended so many people who sadly and needlessly died alone in the pandemic. She could do so little to help medically, but always held their hands so that they did not pass alone and scared. A terrible, terrible time…

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    • Thank you, Christine, I’m pleased you liked these. I love your comment about this being my ‘signature’ – I hadn’t thought of it like that but if I was ever told I could only ever listed to two bands it would be these guys and Oysterband. Both are folk rock, so that is definitely me!

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