Arctic Monkeys have released Opening Night, their first new song since 2022 album The Car, with proceeds benefiting the charity War Child.
Opening Night is taken from HELP(2), a sequel to War Child’s 1995 album Help, which brought together A-list music names to raise £1.2m for children affected by conflict, including Radiohead, Blur, Sinéad O’Connor and the Smokin’ Mojo Filters (a supergroup of Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller).
The new compilation, released on 6 March, is similarly star-studded. As well as alumni from the 1995 album – Portishead’s Beth Gibbons and Blur’s Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon – and legends such as Pulp, Beck and Depeche Mode, there are a host of successful younger musicians including Olivia Rodrigo, Fontaines DC, Cameron Winter, Wet Leg and Sampha.
Oscar-nominated film-maker Jonathan Glazer also contributed to the project, working with children in war zones across Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen and Sudan to create their own films, and recruiting children in the UK to document the making of the project.
Arctic Monkeys, whose debut album turns 20 this week, said in a statement: “We are proud to support the invaluable work War Child do and hope the record will make a positive difference to the lives of children affected by war.”
James Ford, who has produced or co-produced all but one of the Arctic Monkeys’ albums, oversaw the album which was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in November.
“The original Help meant a lot to me and to have the opportunity, given the current news cycle, to help galvanise our music community into doing something as unarguably positive as helping children in war zones seemed like a no-brainer,” he said. “The experience of making the album itself has been very powerful, and dare I say life-affirming.”
War Child estimates that the number of children affected globally by war has jumped from one in 10 when the 1995 compilation was released, to one in five today, around 520 million children.
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