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Highland musician's Big Wide World offers 'positive message' on environment at COP26 and a tonic for 'climate depression'


By Margaret Chrystall

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Liza Mulholland, her song will feature at COP26.
Liza Mulholland, her song will feature at COP26.

A song written and released by a Highland musician celebrating the environment will feature at the COP26 conference in Glasgow.

Liza Mulholland, who is a member of popular local band Dorec-a-belle, wanted her song Big Wide World to have a positive message.

Liza explained: “It’s not about doom and gloom, destruction and extinction. It’s all too easy to feel very despondent at everything we hear around climate emergency and environmental crisis.

“But the song celebrates the natural world, its creatures and everything that grows, swims and flies.

“It’s important to get outdoors and really look closely at what is all around us – then we might take steps to ensure, we – and politicians – do all we can to protect it.”

Liza had just released the song when she had an email asking if the song could be used at a couple of COP26-related events.

Liza's single Big Wide World with the NASA image of Earth.
Liza's single Big Wide World with the NASA image of Earth.

And she has had an email from someone in New York who wanted to share the song around her circles in America.

“So it might even get heard in some far-flung places!” she said.

Liza, a former TV producer, also put together her own video for the song, using an app to put images of animals and nature together.

But when Liza found the perfect cover image for the single, it involved contacting NASA –­ the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ­ in America! Liza said: “I had found the perfect image of the Earth on their website, but thought I had better ask for their permission before I used it.

“I didn’t know how long I’d have to wait to hear from them – if they replied at all! I thought they must get millions of requests, so I wasn’t even sure if I would get a reply.

“But I got one straight away. I’d said I wanted to use it with a song and what it was about. And I got an email back saying ‘Of course it’s OK!’.”

Liza wanted her song to be mellow and describes the effect she wanted to create as “dreamy”.

She said: “I think there are a lot of people suffering from ‘climate depression’, almost.

“It’s hard not to because obviously it is in the headlines every single day about all the horrors that are happening around the world – fires, species extinction, people dying in floods and mud slides.

“The last few years have been quite harrowing with the things that have been happening – the ice melting and the Amazon rainforest being cut down.

“So I think it’s vital and urgent that we do everything we can.

“But people feel exhausted and overwhelmed by it because it seems too big.

“So I didn’t want to make my song about that or my video – I wanted them to celebrate nature and to honour this planet that we call home and to celebrate the natural world.”

Liza would love her song to make a difference.

“You always think when you have a song about something that ‘one song isn’t going to change the world’.

“But maybe art in all its forms can maybe make people think in a different way.

“All you can really hope for with a song is that people listen to it, like it and that it might trigger some thoughts to get outside and look closer at what is there and appreciate what we have got.

“I think there has been a lot more of that during the pandemic.

"People have been spending more time outdoors, walking and cycling – and looking and noticing the landscape and animals, plants and trees.

"I think there has been a heightened awareness of the natural world in the past 18 months which is absolutely fantastic.

“I wrote the song in the summer and recorded it with Steve Bull at Glachbeg Studio on the Black Isle. He also plays electric guitar, bass and drums on it.”

Big Wide World is a digital single only on Spotify. Out now on YouTube and Bandcamp.

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