Simon Armitage shares lyrics to his band’s stunning Leeds 2023 song with The Yorkshire Post: Watch and read

The lyrics and music have yet to be heard anywhere else yet but ahead of the song being released on Spotify and other streaming platforms from Monday, Armitage has shared the words he has created with The Yorkshire Post.

He says when Leeds 2023 organisers described their intentions for the opening ceremony, which was called The Awakening, it struck him that a musical contribution would be most suitable after initially being asked to write the script for the ‘sleeping giant’ which appeared over Headingley Stadium as part of the show.

Armitage is in LYR with singer-songwriter Richard Walters and multi-instrumentalist and producer Patrick Pearson. He says while the band has different ways of writing songs, on this occasion it was the lyrics that came first with the melody built around it.

“They commissioned the track which was text-led. I wrote the lyric or poem or whatever you want to call it first and we built the song around it.

"There are three of us in the band. We have built tracks in every direction, sometimes starting with the composition, sometimes starting with the melody. Those two things come from either Pat or from Richard.

"We mostly start from the lyrics but it doesn’t have to be that way. On this occasion, I suppose I felt there was a message and it was important to start from the lyrics and build it that way.

"The difference between writing a lyric and a poem is you know some of the heavy lifting is going to be done through chord changes and instrumentation and orchestration. You don’t have to put everything into the words.

“What I was hoping to get across was emotion. I wanted to write something stirring and I wrote the lyric as a kind of an exhortation to the people of Leeds to say, ‘Come on, let’s go for this. This is an amazing place and let’s harness all these artistic energies’.

“I knew with handing that over to Pat and Richard, they would provide something very moving and very soaring. We knew we didn’t want to write an anthem with a stomping chorus. We wanted something passionate but contemplative and emotional as well.”

He says the performance was the largest audience the band had ever had and the crowd combined with the stage and set design made for a particularly memorable show.

"Walking onto that stage was like walking out of the cargo door of a huge plane on an alien planet with red air everywhere and it turned out that the aliens were incredibly friendly.”

While it was initially planned the performance of the song would be a total one-off, Armitage says making it more widely available is allowing Leeds 2023 organisers to point people towards it “as a song that encapsulates some of the ambitions and ideologies of Leeds for this year”.

His other involvements in Leeds 2023 this year will include the running of a Young Laureate competition in autumn, as well as a laureate festival featuring poets from across the world.

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Awakening by Simon Armitage

The days were wearing

suits of rain,

a big weekender

had missed the train.

​

Cats’ eyes and street signs

were driving the car,

red lights and speed traps

policing the stars.

Draw back the veil

on a Leeds of the soul.

Throw back the blind

on a Leeds of the mind.

​

Then a fat sun rolled

down Merrion Way

and a full moon bowled

along Woodhouse Lane.

​

And some inner spirit

stood up in the blood

like a giant of bricks….

rising out of the mud.

​

A giant of bricks

climbing into the senses,

working the gears

of the nervous system.

​

So wherever it stood

I stood there too,

and whatever it thought

I reckoned was true,

and wherever it looked

I looked myself,

and whatever it touched

I touched as well.

​

​

​

Till bollards were sculptures

and pavements were books

and trees were dancers

and buildings were songs

and taxis were stories

and houses were scenes

and work was an opera

and shops were plays

and trains were poems

and car parks were films

and the weather was drama

and buses were toys

and arcades were canyons

and schools were games

and windows were paintings

and foxes were bears

and footballs were breadfruits

and breadfruits were globes

and wagons were dragons

and benches were thrones

​

and gilded owls were owlsfor real

and a second hand shoe wasa market stall

​

and The Ivanhoe Clock wasa wake up call.

​

A wake up call. A wake up call.

​

Wake up, Leeds,

you’ve got gold in your veins,

you’ve got silver bones,

you’ve got diamonds for brains,

you’ve got neon souls.

​

The inner ring road loopsthe loop,

the outer ring road playshula hoop,

the Corn Exchange isa spinning top,

a pineapple grows inle Burmantoftes…..

Chapeltown, Harehills, Bramley, Armley

Holbeck’s a gallery, Seacroft’sa library.

Open your eyes and a cityin slumber

floats off down the Aire andthe Ouse and the Humber…

​

Draw back the veil

on a Leeds of the soul.

Throw back the blind

on a Leeds of the mind.

Turn up the heat

on a Leeds of the heart.

Let Leeds off the leash

in a Leeds of the dream.