Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic started, many sports stars took to social media to hail “Frontline Heroes” in various professions. Posts on e.g. Instagram went viral as more and more celebrities joined in, but when I searched posts from closer to home, I found there was nothing going on. I made a video with my son – me thanking my sister who is a nurse and my son thanking his teacher. They both loved it and shared it, but the video did not go viral and no other Finnish frontline heroes were thanked as far as I know.
Turre’s “Real Frontline heroes” video: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_5aqBzDzQf/
While the pandemic was on and practically everything in normal life went on stand-by, our band was still working, as we had a bunch of demos almost ready. One of them was called “Show” at the time and had no lyrics or an idea for a story. While practicing “Show” I suddenly felt like singing “Real heroes don’t wear capes – who are they?” in the chorus, because it sounded super cool and contemporary due to the pandemic. “This is it!”, I thought and slowly the text came together – one line at a time. Although the writing was slow and frustrating at times, the melody for the verse and bridge gave me constant headaches. None of us were happy with the melodies, no matter what I tried, until something finally just sounded right. That’s when we pressed the “REC” button and the demo was done. Phew! The demo was also renamed: Real Heroes.
When the recordings for our second album “Heartsbury” had started in the fall of 2020, we were already looking forward to releasing the songs in 2021 and hopefully playing some shows too. After a brief hiatus we wanted to make sure that we would come back with a bang and a plan to use ‘Real Heroes’ as the first single release started to take form. As the recordings proceeded, we became more aware that ‘Real Heroes’ would need something special both for the music video and social media. We came up with the idea of recruiting friends and family members working in the health sector and other professions where they were exposed to COVID-19 every day, but still did their job for the “love of the game”. The idea evolved to having them hold a sign that said “I mask up for” and the person/persons they wear a mask for while doing their job. What amazing pics we started receiving – not only from our family and friends, but their co-workers too.
Now that ‘Real Heroes‘ (single + video) is released we can easily answer the question “Real heroes – who are they?”. Just watch the video and check out the names of the wonderful real life everyday heroes in the comments. And please share the video and tag family and friends so that everyone who you identify as real heroes see it and understand that although we don’t say it daily, we appreciate everything they do to make sure we all get through these testing times.
To all the real frontline heroes out there, risking your lives to keep us safe: thank you! ❤
-Turre
