Written by admin
“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” is a song written by John Lennon and released on the Beatles 1965 album Help! The song was influenced by the folk stylings of Bob Dylan but at the same time the song features an innovative use of Mixolydian chord structures uncommon in your typical folk song. The interesting use of the flat VII chord (here in the key of G, this is F) creates a tension in the verses that mirrors the uncertainty of the songwriter’s emotional state leading up to the more boisterous, positive exclamation in the chorus. Ironically the direct statement in the chorus is a sort of intentionally ambiguous statement. It’s almost as if Lennon is saying: “I’ve figured it out, they want me to hide my love away but hell with that — I won’t!”
I recorded this song in the Bronx, NY at the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak (yes, I practiced social distancing.) The song reinvented itself for me in this context. How many of us want to be physically near our loved ones, but still as of the moment I’m writing this, cannot be? Yet at the same time the joyous exclamation of the chorus still resonates for me because we have to stay positive, we have to know that this too shall pass. We have to know that we will not always need to “hide our love away.”
