Behind The Lyric: UnConquered Sun … or A Pagan Christmas Carol (lol) Sydney Style

UnConquered Sun began life as a simple non-denominational Christmas song based on the legend of the Yuletide.

The old sun dies at the darkest part of winter and is buried for three days before being reborn as the “prince of winter” – the newborn solstice child who grows throughout the spring to be crowned king at the peak of the following summer solstice (June in the Northern Hemisphere, December in the Southern). The cycle of life continues as the virile young sun-king ages through Autumn to become the ancient King of Winter who dies and is reborn at Yuletide as the child-prince – hence, The UnConquered Sun. Or A Pagan Christmas Carol, as we like to call it (lol).

I love the symbolism of this legend – the conquering of the darkness by light, the symbolic resurrection of hope and joy in the birth of a child. I really wanted to create a hymn to Christmas that anyone of any denomination could sing – even an atheist. But what makes this myth so powerful is that it is also real. How the earth moves around this remarkable wondrous star that we all take for granted is the secret of our existence – it determines the seasons, it gives us warmth and beauty, it feeds us by making our food sources grow. Our sun truly is unconquered. And no matter what religion we choose to follow, none of us can survive without it.

This song is so very “me” in so very many ways – but I could never have written it without the creative “Fyre”* of  Ritchie Neville and Sven Tydeman. I’d penned a Christmas love ballad – Breathe The Snow – and had the utterly joyful experience of working with them both at Kitty Groove in Sydney (where the track was produced). It was around the time of the Australian winter solstice and we all had a blast, becoming instant friends. Ritchie mentioned that his Mum had suggested he write a Christmas song … I told him I’d always wanted to write a spiritual but non-denominational hymn … we got to talking about the deepest, darkest roots of the solstice myth … he got me watching some great docos on the subject … and wow! – talk about a conversation changing your life!

I wrote the lyrics in a flash on a Friday evening before going out to dinner. This is one of the few songs I’ve written where the melody came instantly, flowing as naturally as a sea of light over the words. It was the first song I’d written after separating from my long-time partner and I think you can hear that strange combination of liberation and darkness in the music. The next day at KG, Sven came up with the “prince of winter” chorus idea (which absolutely makes it in so many ways) and Ritchie concentrated on the violins, conjuring that mystical, edgy quality from the soundscape that is so divine.

We sculpted the music in UnConquered Sun until it was exactly right. To me it was like a mathematical equation with just one solution – and, thank God, both Sven and Ritchie got that. They did such an amazingly beautiful job on this track – really extraordinary. I can hear the magic of that time we spent together in the studio, just creating – and then binding it up with the beginnings of true friendship, and it is still very special to me.

I wanted Clare OMeara to play the violin.  She’d done all the violins on another track (Ruby, Ruby**) that the incredible Barbara Griffin had produced for me, drawing out so many of the haunting and mystical elements that became the template for the sound we created in UnConquered Sun. I’d been taken with Bob Dylan’s Hurricane since time immemorial and wanted something quite experimental – gritty rather than new age, epic rather than just purely ethereal. It’s very Massive Attack, but quite traditional too. Clare is such a joyous and wild violinist – and so able to channel whatever is needed in the studio. She laid the violin down the day before my former “father-in-law”, who was the loveliest of men, died after a long illness. He is very much the old king in the song, just as my son Jack, who was grief-stricken about his grandfather’s death, is the child-prince. What an amazingly intense and difficult – and extraordinary – few weeks that was!!!!

I like to think of this song as my prayer to the earth. On one level it’s simply a story about the solstice as I understand it – on another, it’s about the triumph of light over darkness which is what I believe is at at the very heart of living itself. Death is never the victor: the cycle of life continues. The seeds of summer are present already in the deepest part of every winter, the deepest part of every human tragedy – every difficulty, every piece of pain and loss.

After all the overblown angst of 2012, this is my Christmas – or should I say solstice lol – present to the world in 2013. It’s about awareness, not disaster, it’s about remembering the simplicity of things that have been forgotten, things that were, and are, every bit as essential to us as human beings before technology raced like clouds across the sun we sometimes forget to even notice. Without the sun – and its relationship to the earth – we are nothing. Without the light of hope and reason, of joy and renewal, without our deep connection to the movements of the earth on which we stand, lit by the light-giving sun, we have no future.

This is the message of Christmas for me: remember not just the beautiful Star of Bethlehem, but the sun, the nearer star that works with this fragile earth to give us life.

*Fyre is a word I’ve “coined” to describe the creative co-operation and collaboration between artists in the studio, whether musical, film or art. There is passion and energy in the process, but also a kind of magic that is hard to define, which is why there is a mysterious, even faery-like “y” at the heart of it. It’s also a bit like God – in my opinion, it really only happens when there are two or more people in the room lol:)

** Ruby Ruby will be released in 2014.

Photo Credit: Jack Muranty