By Your Side / Landslide, by Allison Russell

By Your Side / Landslide by Allison Russell, released 29 January 2021 1. By Your Side 2. Landslide 1. “By Your Side” – Sade – (Sade Adu / Andrew Hale / Stuart Matthewman / Paul S. Denman) An endlessly expansive and inclusive song of love - it could be the love between lovers, the love of a parent for a child, the love for an elder who is not long for this world…It feels like it has always existed and always will - it feels like an expression of our collective unconscious - it comforts me and invokes a melancholy yearning all at once. I was singing this one to my seven-year-old daughter, Ida, like a lullaby. I couldn’t get through it without crying. This pandemic has been devastating for our little ones. I’ve returned to this song almost daily during these hard months. “By Your Side” may have lost the Grammy back in 2001 - but it has won the test of time. Sade lights the way for so many of us - I remember how electrified I felt the first time I heard her and saw her on television - a mixed heritage black woman like me - not fitting easily or neatly into any box- transcending them all. A living, breathing Goddess. I sing this in homage and gratitude. I hope to have the privilege of meeting her one day. Sade’s voice gives me strength and hope. X AR 2. “Landslide” – Fleetwood Mac (Stevie Nicks) I was terrified to touch this song at first - it is such an iconic classic and has been covered by so many. But then I thought - what would Stevie Nicks do? If she hadn’t written it - she’d find a way to make it her own… So, I found my way in, through translation- little snippets of the lyrics started coming to me in French. I pondered how difficult the art of poetry translation is and I decided to accept the challenge my subconscious was throwing down...The song deserves no lesser sacrifice. I agonized over this translation of Stevie’s luminous lyrics - I tried to remain completely faithful to her meaning as I understand it. I tried to reproduce the beauty, inevitability and sadness in French - in order to do so - I had to take some poetic license with the vocabulary. It is an offering of love and acceptance for what cannot be changed. Landslide or L’Avalanche - this enduring melody, this human experience - speaks for itself. Thank you, Stevie Nicks. X AR