Behind the scenes of Help 2, the star-studded charity album
Damon Albarn is standing in the doorway of Abbey Road’s canteen, deep in conversation with The Libertines’ Carl Barat.
Nearby, Pulp are queueing for a fresh batch of lasagne.
Around them, half a dozen of children are running around, filming everything on handheld cameras.
All of them are excitedly awaiting the arrival of Olivia Rodrigo.
These were the scenes in London last November, as some of the world’s biggest stars convened to record a new charity album in aid of Warchild.
The tracklist, revealed yesterday, is like a who’s who of indie rock. Wet Leg, The Last Dinner Party, Wolf Alice, Fontaines DC, Nilüfer Yanya, Cameron Winter, Ezra Collective, Foals and Young Fathers all contribute.
Over the course of one week, 23 tracks were recorded. At times, five of Abbey Road’s famed studios were in use, with collaborations springing up on the spur of the moment.
Blur’s Graham Coxon plays guitar with Rodrigo on a cover of The Magnetic Fields’ The Book Of Love. Damon Albarn’s session saw him joined by Johnny Marr on guitar, with additional vocals by Kae Tempest and Grian Chatten.
Later in the day, Jarvis Cocker got back from a bathroom break to find them all in his studio – so he got them to sing the intro to a new Pulp song, Begging For Change.
“The just turned up, so I thought, ‘Why not?'” he laughs. “I’m not used to that kind of thing, but it was really good.”
The album is the spritual successor to 1995’s Help! – recorded at the height of Britpop, and featuring contributions from Paul Weller, Radiohead, Suede, Paul McCartney, The KLF, Portishead and The Manic Street Preachers.
It was also, famously, the only time Oasis and Blur appeared on the same record, just months after their legendary (and acrimonious) chart battle.
“We’ll put aside our differences for the cause,” Noel Gallagher said at the time. “And it’s the only time you’ll see us agreeing on anything.”
The record sold 70,000 copies in its first week, raising nearly £1.25m to help children in war-stricken areas, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In 2025, the fund-raising is even more urgent. According to Warchild, 520 million children worldwide – almost one in five – are affected by war, with simultaneous crises in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza.
The figure is higher than any time since the Second World War, at the same time as governments across the world are cutting international aid.
“At the moment, there really does seem to be a lot of bad things happening, and a lot of people feel powerless,” says Cocker.
“They’re looking at the news and they don’t know what to do. So I would hope this album is something the people can enjoy, and also know that they’re trying to make a positive change.”
The first single, released on Thursday, is a new track by Arctic Monkeys called Opening Night.
A sparse, sinister ballad, it finds Alex Turner singing about political sloganeering and “supercomputer crusades” before a beautifully harmonised chorus that offers a message of hope in dark times.
The song dates back a couple of years, drummer Matt Helders tells the BBC, but had never been finished.
Getting the call from Warchild was the prompt they needed to complete the song, with lyrics that felt like a call to arms.
“With charity records, it’s often tempting to do a cover, or an interesting collaboration,” he says, “but we enjoy making records and being in the studio, so it was fun to work on something that we’d written.”
Adding to the fun was that film crew of children, principally aged between eight and 10, who documented the entire recording progress.
They were corralled by Bafta-winning director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Under The Skin, The Zone Of Interest), who wanted to connect the music back to the young people it would help.
“They were given free reign to just roam around, which really changed the atmosphere,” says Helders.
“Studios can be quite a stiff, clinical environment, sometimes. But they were walking around and bumping into stuff. It made it fun.”
Cocker wasn’t so sure.
“I hate anybody watching me sing in the studio, because I’m kind of a self-conscious person and somebody pointing a camera at me doesn’t help with that,” he says.
“And while I was singing in there, I think they were getting a bit bored, so they were just like lying on the floor and filming the ceiling.”
Ultimately, he found the children’s presence liberating. Something about their total lack of interest allowed him to shed the idea that the studio recording has to capture “the perfect, definitive version” of a song.
As a result, Pulp’s contribution to Help(2) is called Begging For Change – and it has a loose, live band feeling that exemplifies the album’s spontaneity and sense of community.
In fact, the youthful camera crew even made it onto the record.
“It’s an interesting thing, you know, because kids are always told, ‘Shut up, because I’m trying to think’, or, ‘Shhh, your dad’s hungover’,” he says.
“So when they’re given the chance to make a noise, they will do that. So what we tried to do on our song was to get them to scream, and they did it very well.”
You won’t get to hear that song until Help(2) is released on 6 March. Thanks to record labels and pressing plants donating their services free of charge, it will be cheaper than standard albums – with a double vinyl costing around £26 – and Warchild receiving all the profits.
“We found that this project really lit a fire under the creative community, ” says Rich Clarke, the charity’s head of music. “Lots of people wanted to get involved.”
He lets slip that the 23 tracks on the album weren’t the only product of the week-long recording sessions.
“There’s a there’s a whole load of tracks, around 10 or so, that that came in when people heard about the project. So actually, there were some tough decisions for the team about what made it onto the record.”
But Olivia Rodrigo’s song – about the purity of love – was always earmarked as the closing track.
“It’s a really beautiful cover,” says Clarke.
“The record really takes you through a journey, with some powerful themes around conflict, but Olivia leaves you with a track about the redemptive power of love, which is a really poignant final note”.
