SATELLITES - ENTER SHIKARI (2020)

SATELLITES - ENTER SHIKARI (2020)

Plucked from their album ‘Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible’ (2020), I frankly don’t think this track is talked about enough. While providing mammoth beats and huge production in this full-length, Enter Shikari have created such an important track with ‘satellites* *’.

For a band as big as them to include the LGBTQ+ community in a song is a massive deal, sewn with incredibly prominent hard hitting lyrics and allowing so many people to resonate with it. Rou wrote this track about one of his friends getting a boyfriend and conveying he was scared to hold hands in public (something Rou had always taken for granted). So this song was written as an exercise in empathy towards the LGBTQ+ community, about the mental health aspects of being afraid to show affection, worrying about archaic social judgement and ignorance.

Understandably, if you’re not a part of the LGBTQ+ community you may not recognise why lyrics like ‘I’m sick of concealing, I’m sick of the feeling / I no longer want to hide’ hit so hard. The imagery of space inside this beautiful, uplifting release is so special, giving the feeling of being out of your body another meaning. This track is crafted with so many memorable parts, from starting lyrics ‘I wish I was a comet’ to ‘and we orbit fast but I wish we could collide’, reminding us there are so many people that might’ve stopped themselves from feeling out of fear.

This track means so much to me as it will be the same for many, the way the situation is explored through an incredible song is something I will always be thankful for. Where pain is presented in ‘I still drag the closet, oh my bones they ache inside’ is a perfect way to describe this feeling like you’re carrying a burden. I hope this track makes you feel like you’re not alone in feeling this way, it’ll get better, coming from someone who’s experienced this first hand.