Peter Gabriel - Love Can Heal (The Dark-Bright-Side Version)

Peter Gabriel - Love Can Heal (The Dark-Bright-Side Version) ‪@MollemStudios‬
Love Can Heal is the ninth track to be released from the album i/o, arriving on the second full moon of August 2023.
Album: I/O (2023)
LYRICS
Whatever mess, you find yourself within
Regardless how you got there
When the edifice has slipped away and died
And left you standing there defenseless
Love can heal love can heal
Love can heal love can heal
There's something coming out of you
Your body and your skin
Like mist comes from the water
You can sense it
When the cold has clenched it's cords
And, alone, you face what's coming
For a moment, I raise my head
I can breathe the air
Out in the sunlight, in all the colours
Set against, a bed of green a bed of green
Love can heal love can heal
Love can heal love can heal
Give into love (Love can heal)
Give into love (Love can heal)
Give into love (Love can heal)
Give into love (Love can heal)
(Love can heal, Love can heal)
Love can heal love can heal
Love can heal love can heal us

Songwriter: Peter Gabriel

Written and produced by Peter Gabriel, Love Can Heal is ‘a dreamy, experiential piece with some abstract imagery,’ says Gabriel, ‘a carpet of sound, a tapestry where things are woven together, but not necessarily supposed to stick out, but just form part of a whole.’

Love Can Heal is a song that has been performed during the recent i/o tour, but actually had its live premiere during Peter Gabriel and Sting’s Rock, Paper, Scissors tour of North America of 2016.

‘Love Can Heal was written around 2016 and I did start playing it midway through the tour and dedicated it to Jo Cox, who was the British MP brutally murdered by an extremist and someone that I had met at a leadership conference. I think the song fits right in to the themes of the album in the sense that i/o is about feeling and being connected to everything and in a way, the next evolution of being connected to things is a feeling of love for everything.’

Though not directly related to the song, there is this peripheral connection and inspiration that comes from Gabriel’s interest in the parallels between how people, over many centuries, have used psychedelic drugs for mystical experiences and the current clinical research of many Universities into their healing powers – ‘it sounds trite just to say ‘love can heal’, but I really believe that it is a key element and that when people feel interaction, warmth, giving, part of something alive and not isolated, that they’re much more likely to do well and be able to offer more themselves. The music began with this meditative, repeated sequence and the essence of all these sounds was trying to create a sensual palette. With the work that Hans-Martin Buff’s been doing on the immersive mix too, you’re getting this sense of being touched in many places and it should be a place just to drift off into. That was my aim.’