{"id":392717,"date":"2026-01-27T07:33:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T07:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/392717\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T07:33:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T07:33:15","slug":"inside-war-child-uk-charity-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/392717\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside War Child UK Charity Album"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAbbey Road Studios was buzzing with activity last fall. Longtime record executive Rich Clarke remembers the scene in the London studio\u2019s cafeteria in late November 2025: \u201cYou look up and you\u2019ve got [Fontaines D.C.\u2019s] Grian Chatten<\/a> having a talk with [the Libertines\u2019<\/a>] Carl Bar\u00e2t by the door,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019ve got Damon Albarn<\/a> sat with Jonathan Glazer<\/a> on one table. And then suddenly all of Pulp<\/a> walk in and they\u2019re in a queue to get their lasagna.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThose luminaries were all there to work on HELP(2), a compilation album supporting the charity<\/a> organization War Child UK<\/a>, where Clarke serves as head of music. Out March 6, it\u2019s a majorly star-studded affair, with new songs and covers by Olivia Rodrigo<\/a>, Cameron Winter<\/a>, Wet Leg<\/a>, Sampha<\/a>, Arlo Parks<\/a>, Depeche Mode<\/a>, Big Thief<\/a>, and many others. The first single from the album, \u201cOpening Night,\u201d<\/a> is also the first new song that Arctic Monkeys<\/a> have released since 2022:\u00a0a perfectly louche anthem-in-waiting with an instant-classic lead vocal from Alex Turner.<\/p>\n

\n\tFounded in the early Nineties by a pair of filmmakers who were horrified by the violence of the Bosnian Civil War, War Child provides services to children who are affected by global conflict \u2014 meaning not just the immediate needs of food, water, and shelter, but also longer-term support for mental health and education. The organization has a long history of partnering with musicians, going back to 1995\u2019s The Help Album, which boasted new songs from Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Blur, Oasis, Portishead, and more of the biggest names in British music. \u201cThat had a huge effect for the charity,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cAt that point, they were doing minor things, delivering supplies behind siege lines in Sarajevo. It allowed the organization to scale up, because crucially, it had money to fund activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe idea for a new Help album had been percolating since around Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. \u201cSince that moment, we\u2019ve seen escalation of violence in the Middle East. We\u2019ve seen the civil war in Sudan go to probably the largest humanitarian crisis in the world right now \u2014 there\u2019s 15 million children<\/a> who are in need of humanitarian assistance in Sudan,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cThere\u2019s been a real feeling from the artist community of wanting to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\t\tMonkey Business for a Good Cause\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe project gained speed in late 2024, when producer James Ford came on board, followed quickly by Arctic Monkeys, with whom he\u2019s worked closely for many years. \u201cAnything James touches turns to gold,\u201d drummer Matt Helders tells Rolling Stone. \u201cIf he\u2019s putting something together, we know it\u2019s going to be for the right reasons, and also be a good-quality thing, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tArctic Monkeys<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoebe Fox*<\/p>\n

\n\tArctic Monkeys have their own relationship with War Child going back to 2018, when they played a show at the Royal Albert Hall and donated the proceeds to the organization. A live album from that concert, released two years later, yielded even more funds for children affected by war. \u201cI think we\u2019re just shy of \u00a31.5 million from the show and the record,\u201d Clarke says.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the band met up at Abbey Road toward the end of 2025, it was their first time together in a studio in a few years. They decided to revisit an unfinished song that Turner had been toying with for more than a decade; Helders estimates that it first surfaced \u201cin Joshua Tree, when we used to record out there.\u201d (Dedicated Monkeys scholars can deduce that it probably entered the picture during the sessions for 2009\u2019s Humbug<\/a> or 2013\u2019s AM<\/a>, both partially recorded in the California desert.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe never got to scratch the itch of completing this song,\u201d Helders says. \u201cIt was just one of those that wouldn\u2019t go away in his head, I think. There was never a full version of it. We\u2019d jam it out and try to write parts for it. It never got over the finish line, but it was too good to just leave alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, they tried taking another run at \u201cOpening Night\u201d in the style they\u2019ve evolved into on later albums like Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino<\/a> and The Car<\/a>. \u201cAnd it just worked,\u201d Helders says. \u201cIt\u2019s different to what it was going to be if we did it 10, 15 years ago, but we were all really happy with it\u2026 It\u2019s almost like this song was waiting until we were good enough to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tComing Full Circle\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rest of the HELP(2) sessions, the bulk of which took place over three days at Abbey Road, featured some other familiar faces, too. Back in 1996, when Pulp won the Mercury Prize for their era-defining album Different Class, they donated their winnings to War Child, feeling that The Help Album ought to have won instead. Three decades later, Jarvis Cocker and company stepped up to contribute a characteristically droll rocker called \u201cBegging for Change\u201d to the new project.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDamon Albarn<\/p>\n

\n\tThe original Help album, released at the height of the Britpop craze, included an instrumental track from Blur. This time, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon dropped by Abbey Road to sit in with the indie band English Teacher, while Albarn teamed up with Chatten and rapper Kae Tempest to polish off a new song called \u201cFlags.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was quite major chords, which is unusual for me,\u201d the Blur\/Gorillaz singer tells Rolling Stone. \u201cSo when conversation of War Child came, I thought it was quite a good thing to present as an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlbarn is a fan of both Chatten and Tempest, calling them both \u201chuge talents,\u201d and he was delighted to form an impromptu trio with them in the studio. \u201cFlags\u201d wound up featuring guitar from Johnny Marr, Portishead\u2019s Adrian Utley, and Dave Okumu, as well as backing vocals from Cocker, Bar\u00e2t, Declan McKenna, Marika Hackman, the members of Black Country, New Road, and several other musicians who were around that day.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe did it all together, like a band,\u201d Albarn says. \u201cWhen you do music for charity, it can be a bit trite somehow. But I don\u2019t think we got distracted by that sense of, \u2018Oh, we\u2019re doing a charity record.\u2019 We all just enjoyed recording together in Abbey Road.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAll of this action was recorded on hand-held cameras wielded by a crew of grade-schoolers that Glazer, the filmmaker behind The Zone of Interest and Under the Skin, sent to Abbey Road to document the sessions. \u201cIt\u2019s to tell the story through the eyes of children,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cAt one point, they\u2019d be sat next to Damon on the piano stool, or sticking a camera up Jarvis\u2019 nose in the vocal booth in Studio Three.\u00a0It had a wonderful effect on the atmosphere, because once you\u2019ve got kids running around, it just takes the stress away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSadly, Ford, who was diagnosed<\/a> with leukemia in early 2025, was unable to attend the sessions in person. So War Child brought in top producers including Marta Salogni and Catherine Marks to help out, and Ford continued to provide as much remote input as possible.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tProducer James Ford<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPip Bourdillon*<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the final day of recording, Dec. 17, Olivia Rodrigo came by Abbey Road to record a quietly stunning cover of the Magnetic Fields\u2019 \u201cThe Book of Love\u201d; the track also features Coxon on acoustic guitar. Ford, who was receiving treatment in the hospital at the time, guided the session over Zoom. \u201cHe was actually talking into Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s [headphones] while she was recording, while he was having a blood transfusion,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cRemarkable man, and an absolute genius.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tAround Christmas, Clarke got to hear Arctic Monkeys\u2019 \u201cOpening Night\u201d for the first time. A longtime fan of the band \u2014\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m old enough to remember seeing them in Camden in skinny jeans and a flannel shirt and long hair\u201d \u2014 he knows that getting a new single from them is no small feat. \u201cWe didn\u2019t take it for granted,\u201d he says. \u201cI was absolutely blown away. It\u2019s a brilliant track, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith \u201cOpening Night\u201d out now and the album arriving on streaming services soon, he\u2019s looking forward to seeing how fans respond to all the music that got made at Abbey Road for War Child. \u201cThe wonderful thing is, these rights are going to support children affected by conflict in perpetuity,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cThe music\u2019s the legacy piece, and the quality of that will carry through for the next 30 years, we hope. Fingers crossed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Abbey Road Studios was buzzing with activity last fall. Longtime record executive Rich Clarke remembers the scene in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[29302,193,27117,96,128,34240,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-392717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-arctic-monkeys","9":"tag-charity","10":"tag-damon-albarn","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-olivia-rodrigo","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}