When Sussex-born singer Tom Odell wrote the song Another Love a decade ago, he couldn’t have known it would play a role in boosting morale during a devastating war in Europe 10 years hence. But Odell’s song has, somewhat surprisingly, become a symbol of solidarity with and between the people of Ukraine on social media platform TikTok.
Hundreds of short videos have appeared on TikTok that either set Odell’s song to images from the war or show users – Ukrainian and otherwise – singing it. One montage comprising clips of a moved yet defiant President Volodymyr Zelensky has been liked over half a million times.
Music, especially the Ukrainian national anthem, has recently been sung to rousing effect in parliament, in bomb shelters and on the streets of Kyiv. But Odell’s song has nothing to do with Ukraine, or warfare. Rather, it’s a piano ballad with a rowdy ending about fighting for someone you love. “I wanna take you somewhere so you know I care/ But it’s so cold and I don’t know where,” it starts. The spring daffodils, Odell tells us, won’t flower like they did last year. It’s easy to see why the song has taken off. Odell himself took to TikTok to say he’s “humbled and honoured” that his track is being used. “Long live Ukraine. I shall come and we shall sing it together soon,” he said.
Meanwhile, a video of a little Ukrainian girl singing Let It Go from Disney’s Frozen to a bunker full of sheltering civilians has gone viral. The story made the front pages of some newspapers this week. It was impossible not to be moved when she sang, in Ukrainian, that “the cold never bothered [her] anyway.”
Music has always been used in wartime as an expression of hope and solidarity (and, occasionally, fear). But in the era of social media, this has reached new heights. In 2022 songs and recording artists have “more socio-political power than they’ve ever had because of social media,” says Brad Schreiber, author of Music is Power: Popular Songs, Social Justice and the Will to Change. “They can mobilise awareness of topics, such as what is going on in Ukraine right now. And this is from artists who might normally never really have a political consciousness,” he says.
