It’s a Constant Practice to be a Superlover: A Conversation with Allison Russell
Allison Russell teams up with the legendary Annie Lennox for the astonishingly beautiful and emotionally powerful “Superlover.” The song is a call to action to protect, care, and love all children in the world, with no exceptions. It is a song that the world needs right now.
Russell chats with OFM about her new version of “Superlove” and her time on Broadway acting as Persephone in the musical Hadestown.
How the New Version of “Superlover” Came to Fruition
“Superlover” was originally a Birds Of Chicago song that Russell and her husband JT Nero wrote. It appears on their 2018 album Love In Wartime. Since that time, the song has gone through many iterations and has continued to evolve. The new version of the song initially arose from writing songs with Hozier. “Hozier and I got together to write some songs for Mavis Staples,” comments Russell. “I thought of this one as being potentially being one we offer her. He suggested that I extend the chorus, which I ended up doing, and we didn’t end up using that song for Mavis.
I ended up really liking the new version with the extended chorus, which led me to start playing it again with my ensemble, The Rainbow Coalition. Then, when we were opening for Hozier all last year and with what is happening here (Canada and the United States) and abroad, it felt right to start singing it again. We would play it every night of the Unreal Unearth Tour.”
Updating the Lyrics to Reflect What is Happening in the World
For the new version of “Superlover” Russell updated some of the lyrics to reflect what is happening in the world currently. “I felt called to name some of those places where I feel our collective care absolutely needs to turn to and embrace in order to break cycles of harm that we are directly funding as American, Canadian, and, in Annie’s case, U.K. taxpayers,” she reflects. “It’s easy to think these things are far away. Sudan is far away. Congo is far away. Haiti is not far away, but we think of it that way. Palestine and Israel are far away. But no, we are as responsible for the children there as we are for the children in Tennessee and here in Canada. We invest in these systems of harm, and we have to stop doing it.”
Working with Annie Lennox
Russell loved working alongside Lennox on the new version of “Superlover.” “My beautiful and iconic friend whose music I’ve looked up to my whole life, Annie Lennox, said yes when I asked her if she would record it with me, which was just a dream come true,” says Russell. “I just started crying when I heard her singing it for the first time. It just breaks and remakes my heart every time I hear it.”
Collaborating with others is a magical experience for Russell, as they bring in their own ideas that take the song in an unexpected direction. “It’s a letting go of expectation, micromanagement, and control, and you have to be willing to sit in uncertainty together, thereby discovering beauties and transcendences that you never could on your own,” she reflects. “I would never dream of telling Annie what to sing. I sent her the song, and she sang what she felt. We got together and made that video, and she did what she felt.”
Interconnectedness of Social Justice Songwriting and Personal Songwriting
Often, people differentiate between social justice songwriting and personal songwriting. According to Russell, they are always intertwined and inextricable. “I think we try to create false divisions between which is personal and between which is political or sociopolitical, but the reality is that we live in a society, and our living is a collective experience, and there’s no getting away from that,” she comments. “From the moment we wake up in the morning, every choice we make, there is a political or sociopolitical ramification to every choice we make or what we say or do to another person affects them, the world and the vibrations of the entire world.
“I think of ‘Superlover’ as quite an intensely personal song, and part of why I wanted to sing it with Annie is, we are both mothers, and we are rooted in trying to reduce harm coming from the understanding and unconditional Superlove of mothers,” says Russell. “I think all the adults on the planet are actually parenting all of the children on the planet whether they admit it or not or accept the responsibility consciously or not. That’s what is actually happening. It doesn’t matter if you have your own biological children, adoptive children, foster children, chosen children, or if you declare you hate children and are never gonna have any or want nothing to do with them; you are still an adult on the planet basically creating the present and future for all of humanity. Therefore, you are co-parenting in some sense.”
When talking about the concept of how all adults are responsible for all the children on the planet, Russell shares something that James Baldwin wrote: “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe, and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” This is something she believes is very important to live by. “That is my deepest truth. If we start from that premise, then we know war is child abuse. We know transphobia is child abuse. We know any time we are saying that some child is less human than another child for whatever reason, we know that is a false statement. It is a betrayal of our responsibility as adults on the planet to care for all the children on the planet.”
Offering Prayers Through Songs
Russell feels that offering prayers through songs is very important. “I think that I feel really called in these times to find points of connection to remind myself and anyone who cares to listen that we are, in fact, irrevocably interconnected with every other human on this planet and with the planet herself,” she states. “We will not survive if we continue this level of violence towards each other and our Mother Earth. I think people forget that and get caught up in anger, vengeance, intolerance, hatred, and pettiness. But we are literally getting to a critical point where we will not survive if we continue on this path.
When we speak our truth and find the kindred spirits who want to form a coalition and circle with us in those truths, in my case, harm reduction is my guiding light. I know that we’re not gonna achieve world peace in my lifetime. We can achieve a reduction in conflict and violence and harmful outcomes for those things. Just small things every day can make a vast difference. We don’t know how far the ripples go. What we can do is control what we put out in the world, how we interact with other people, what we support and what we don’t support.”
Russell Chats About the Clarinet
If you’ve listened to Russell’s music before, you will know the clarinet plays a big role. It is one of her defining trademarks. Her clarinet playing is stunningly beautiful. To me, the clarinet feels like an extension of voice,” exclaims Russell. “It opens up my heart completely. The resonance, tone, and sound of a clarinet has such a visceral effect on my limbic system and physical and emotional being. I was really drawn to it even from the first time I heard it on a Joni Mitchell record Ladies On The Canyon the song “For Free.” Ever since that moment, Russell has fallen in love with the instrument. “There’s a mournful and lamenting quality, but it can be triumphant and majestic, and there’s just something about the tonality and resonance of the clarinet that to me is so moving.”
Russell shares that there is no clarinet on the new version of “Superlover” because Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman from Prince’s The Revolution made terrific contributions. Russell particularly enjoyed the beautiful guitar work that Melvoin added to the track. “I loved what Wendy did on the electric guitar, and she put it through this effect that, to me, just made it sound like astral dancing through galactic plains,” comments Russell. “I didn’t need to hear anything else after she put that on there. It didn’t need any other sound to obscure the ethereal majesty of what she does.”
Performing in Hadestown
Recently, Russell played Persephone in the musical Hadestown on Broadway. Hadestown was written by Anaïs Mitchell “and directed by Rachel Chavkin. Russell loves Hadestown and was delighted to get the chance to be part of it and work with such talented people. “It was extraordinary and was my first serious theatre experience—That experience was incredible, such deep ensemble work and of ancient storytelling because it’s rooted in the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus and Hades and Persephone,” she exclaims. “These are thousands and thousands of years old human stories that we continue to tell for a reason. There is a deep archetypal resonance to these stories.”
One thing Russell really enjoyed about the Hadestown experience is the impact it could potentially have on the audience. “What I thought was so magical and wonderful about theater is, there is even another layer of protective bubble so that people who are in the audience can be really present for the work and feel for the characters without feeling reactive, attacked, or indicted themselves,” she says. “They can listen to Hades sing ‘Why We Build The Wall’ and understand that it is a terrible dystopian vision of life and reject that and cheer when a little crack opens up in his heart and he lets the lovers go. Some of those same people might have voted for the current regime in the United States, not understanding that it’s exactly the same thing as building a wall in Hadestown.
They can listen to Hades sing ‘Why We Build The Wall’ and see what’s happening to the workers and people of that town, mourn it, know that something has to change, and know that isn’t how anyone wants to live and maybe that does help them with their analogous situations in real life and helps them shift their consciousness on certain things.
We don’t know how far art can go or what it can change, but it certainly does shift consciousness and change perceptions. That’s why authoritarian regimes, since time immemorial, have tried to shut down the free expression of both artists and the press. The rapidity of the decline of civil liberties, democracies, and human rights in the U.S. just in the first few months of this regime is shocking.”
Concluding Comments
“I think being a Superlover is choosing a community, choosing to be forbearing, understanding other humans and our own weaknesses, transgressions, and mistakes, and it is choosing to believe that we as a species are worthy of love and that we ourselves, and everybody in our community is worthy of love,” says Russell. “Even when people do great harm, they don’t become monsters. They are still humans. They might have behaved monstrously, but they are still human beings. How, as humans, do we want to be treated and how, as humans, do we treat each other? That, to me, is part of being a Superlover, and you can choose it all the time. You can make a thousand mistakes and then one day choose to be loving in the next action. It’s a constant practice to be a Superlover. We’re not gonna get it right all the time, but it is something to strive for.”
Currently, Russell is on her All Returners tour, which will make a stop in Englewood, Colorado, on May 12 at the Gothic Theatre.
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