Hear Peter Gabriel’s New Song, ‘Won’t Stand Down’

Peter Gabriel has released another new song, “Won’t Stand Down,” taken from his upcoming album o\i.

In a statement to his email subscribers, Gabriel described the track as a song “to encourage some sort of activism” and that he initially wanted to write something for an organization called the Elders, founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007.

“Their currency is not based on military power, economic power or political power, but just the moral authority they have from having lived extraordinary, selfless lives,” Gabriel explained. “That’s something which I wanted to talk about, write about and encourage, because it’s pretty dark out there in lots of places and I think we need people who can just nudge both us and our leaders and keep alive some basic values of justice, compassion and democracy – a hope that can help us start envisioning a just, peaceful and fairer world.”

As with the other songs Gabriel has released from o\i  so far,  “Won’t Stand Down” will be released as two versions: a bright-side mix by Mark “Spike” Stent and a dark-side mix by Tchad Blake.

“I think people generally respond much better to positive pictures of what’s coming than they do when they are bombarded and scared by negative ones. We are much more likely to engage if we feel hope. Right now, we don’t see so many positive visions of the future, at least they’re not being projected so strongly as the negative, so I think it’s really important that we start looking for visions to which we can aspire and looking for people who can provide that.”

You can listen to “Won’t Stand Down” — the bright-side mix — below. (The dark-side will follow later this month.)

Inspired by Marvin Gaye

Gabriel’s statement continued: “I have always been a fan of Marvin Gaye and there was a Cuban element to his song ‘Sexual Healing’ that I loved and was exploring — it was something in the way that it allowed the rhythm to move that I liked, and I tried to bring an element of that to this song, while allowing it to evolve into something different.”