Right, first off, I don't have a female friend who died of COVID, nor did I believe that we should have ended lockdown early and moved on. This song is not written from my perspective, it's written from the perspective of an imagined person. This imagined person was not that fantastical though as lots of people saw these lyrics and completely agreed with the sentiment. So much for irony.
I'm often a bit loathe to explain my lyrics as ultimately the meaning can be different for whoever reads and hears them, however, for the record, this song is intended to be critical of those who, apparently getting bored of the pandemic, decided we should all just get on with everything as if nothing had happened. For many this was an option and their motives for feeling like that might be sincere, in this song I was trying to point out that for a huge number of people "moving on" was simply not an option because they had either lost a loved one, or died.
The idea came from me noticing that all the lovely pictures of rainbows that kids had put up in front windows, and even chalked on the pavements, eventually faded or washed away and they did so whilst we were still fairly tightly in the grip of the pandemic.
The video is made up of lots of pictures and clips that friends sent to me. The figure of 127,000 at the end was the UK death toll at the point of publication. 127,000 people who couldn't move on.
You can watch that video above and read the lyrics below.
After The Rainbows (We Can't Move On)
After the rainbows have gone
Why can't we all just move on?
After the rainbows have gone
Why can't they all just get on with their jobs?
I did my time I was clapping in line with my neighbours
Now there are things I must do and I'm sure you must to
Can you blame us?
It's time they went back to school
I'm not breaking the rules but it's time now
Time to get things back on track
I'm aware of the facts but it's time now
My friend was one and I'm sad that she's gone
She was far too young
It's just I miss her, want things back how they were
Now the pavements are clean
Now the rainbows have gone
Why can't we all just move on?