Arctic Monkeys release their first new song since 2022 for War Child | music

Arctic Monkeys have released “Opening Night,” their first new song since their 2022 album The Car, with proceeds benefiting the War Child charity.

Opening Night is from HELP(2), the follow-up to War Child’s 1995 album Help, which brought together A-list music names to raise £1.2 million for children affected by conflict, including Radiohead, Blur, Sinéad O’Connor and the Smokin’ Mojo Filters (a supergroup of Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller).

The new collection, released March 6, is similarly star-studded. As well as alumni of the 1995 album – Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, Damon Albarn and Blur’s Graham Coxon – and legends such as Pulp, Beck and Depeche Mode, there is a host of successful young musicians including Olivia Rodrigo, Fontaine DC, Cameron Winter, White League and Sampha.

Academy Award-nominated director Jonathan Glazer also contributed to the project, working with children in war zones in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen and Sudan to create their own films, and enlisting children in the UK to document the making of the project.

Arctic Monkeys, whose debut album turns 20 this week, said in a statement: “We are proud to support the invaluable work of War Child and hope this record will make a positive difference in the lives of children affected by war.”

James Ford, who has produced or co-produced all but one of Arctic Monkeys’ albums, supervised the album, which was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in November.

“The original assistance meant a lot to me, and having the opportunity, given the current news cycle, to help motivate our music community to do something as undeniably positive as helping children in war zones seemed like a no-brainer,” he said. “The experience of producing the album itself was a very powerful and, dare I say, life-affirming experience.”

War Child estimates that the number of children affected by war globally has jumped from one in 10 when the collection was released in 1995, to one in five today, or about 520 million children.