Redemption Song
"Redemption Song" is a song by Jamaican singer Bob Marley. It is the final track on Bob Marley and the Wailers' twelfth album, Uprising, produced by Chris Blackwell and released by Island Records.[3] The song is considered one of Marley's greatest works. Some key lyrics derived from a speech given by the Pan-Africanist orator Marcus Garvey titled "The Work That Has Been Done", which Marley publicly recited as early as July 1979 during his appearance at the Amandla Festival.[4]
For other uses, see Redemption song (disambiguation)."Redemption Song"
Unlike most of Bob Marley's other tracks, it is strictly a solo acoustic recording, consisting of his singing and playing an acoustic guitar, without accompaniment. The song is in the key of G major.
History[edit]
The song is reported to have been written around 1979, appearing for the first time on a demo tape called "Dada Demos" which, amongst other unreleased tracks and re-recordings of older songs, features also an early drum machine version of Could You Be Loved?. German journalist Teja Schwaner claims to have witnessed Marley playing Redemption Song during a hotel stay in Hamburg on tour in 1976,[5] although he could have confused it with another song.
A few years earlier, Bob Marley had been diagnosed with the cancer in his toe that took his life in 1981. According to Rita Marley, "...he was already secretly in a lot of pain and dealt with his own mortality, a feature that is clearly apparent in the album, particularly in this song."
After its recording for the Uprising album, the song saw its first public performance during the opener show of the Uprising Tour on May 30, 1980, in Zürich, Switzerland, and continued to be featured in every known setlist of that tour's further concerts. There exist at least two music video recordings of the song, one produced by the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, featuring Marley and his keyboarder Earl Lindo both accompanying themselves on guitars, and a second one from September 1980 featuring Marley during a rehearsal break and his band members listening. A few more recordings from live concerts exist, both audio and video, amongst them a performance from Dortmund, Germany, on June 13, 1980, which is featured on the official 2014 release Uprising Live.
"Redemption Song" was released as a single in the UK and France in October 1980 and included a full band rendering of the song. This version has since been included as a bonus track on the 2001 reissue of Uprising, as well as on the 2001 compilation One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers. Although in live performances the full band was used for the song, the solo recorded performance remains the take most familiar to listeners.
In 2004, Rolling Stone placed the song at number 66 among "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". In 2010, the New Statesman listed it as one of the Top 20 Political Songs.[6]
On 5 February 2020 (on the eve of what would have been his 75th birthday), Marley's estate released an official animated video for the song.[7] This also commemorated the 40th anniversary of the song's release.
Covers[edit]
Manfred Mann's Earth Band adapted the song on their album Somewhere in Afrika released in 1982. A shorter version had previously been released as a single. Both arrangements were subtitled "No Kwazulu" and combined Marley's original song with Zulu and Xhosa chants in order to protest Apartheid. The album version also includes a song written by Manfred Mann over the same changes called "Brothers and Sisters of Africa". For live performances, the band opted for an arrangement much closer to Marley's original, as can be heard on the Budapest Live and Mann Alive albums.
[18]
Bono of U2 sung Redemption Song solo acoustic at 16 Zoo TV shows between 1992 and 1993, and he and The Edge have sung it at different events and impromptu performances since then.[19]
No Use for a Name also covered this song on their 1995 album ¡Leche con Carne!.
Jackson Browne performed a cover live at the Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The song appeared on the eponymous CD released the following year.[20]
Stevie Wonder recorded a cover of the song that was released in 1996 on the album Get on the Bus of the feature film with the same name. It was also released in 1996 on Stevie Wonder compilation album Song Review: A Greatest Hits Collection.[21]
Wyclef Jean performed the song for the 9/11 benefit concert America: A Tribute to Heroes on 21 September 2001.
Joe Strummer of The Clash recorded a cover of this song that was released posthumously on the album Streetcore in 2003, which featured his backing band at the time, The Mescaleros. Strummer also covered the song as a duet with Johnny Cash during the latter's sessions for the American IV: The Man Comes Around album, this version being released later in the box set Unearthed.[22]
John Legend also did a cover of it on Bear Witness, Take Action, released in 2020.
Leon Bridges covered the song in 2024 as part of the "One Love" film commemorating the life of the original artist.