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The latest single from the transgender benefit compilation Transa just dropped, and it’s a heart-rending, cross-generational duet between Sam Smith and legendary Black trans musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland.
Released on Wednesday, October 2, the song is a new version of Glenn-Copeland’s seminal “Ever New,” the opening track on his groundbreaking 1986 album, Keyboard Fantasies.
In a press release from the music advocacy organization Red Hot, which produced the compilation, Glenn-Copeland said, “When I wrote ‘Ever New’ I had no idea it would touch so many hearts over so many decades.”
“I cried last year when a fan wrote to tell me that they played ‘Ever New’ for the birth of their child,” he said. “Now, this collaboration with the genius that is Sam Smith is actual proof that our lives are, indeed, made ever new.”
Smith said in the same press release that “it was a true honor and privilege to be in a room with such a beautiful soul in Glenn to record this legendary and very special song with him.”
Transa bills itself as “a spiritual journey celebrating trans people,” and features over 100 artists including André 3000, Julien Baker, and Sade, the latter of whom released her first music in six years for the compilation. Red Hot hasn’t announced the specific organizations that will receive proceeds from Transa, but a press release from July named the advocacy organizations G.L.I.T.S. and Transanta as potential beneficiaries, among others.
While the instrumentation of the original song consists entirely of a singular synthesizer (as the album’s title might give away), this version of “Ever New” is predominantly acoustic. This might seem sacrilegious for a song that’s widely regarded as a pioneering work of electronic music. But in 2020, Glenn-Copeland told Electronic Sound that he “loved the fact [synthesizers] offered me an orchestral palette, even though in the early days you had to squint your ears.”
“They gave me the opportunity to actually hear more of what I was hearing in my head, because I didn’t have the capacity, the physical or financial means, to go out and hire a cellist, a flute player, someone that played traps, all of those different things,” he said to the publication.
Given that context, it seems as though this version of “Ever New” is perhaps the closest to what Glenn-Copeland originally envisioned. The song begins simply with a plucked violin, before layers of sweet, earthy acoustic guitar, the low hum of bass, and flourishes of harp come in. Central to the arrangement is an ethereal riff played on a keyboard that sounds like it could be the Yamaha DX7 that the composer used for Keyboard Fantasies. That melody is then reinforced by a gorgeous, sweeping string section. As Glenn-Copeland himself said, it is the perfect aural representation of the song’s themes of reinvention.
This is all before we get to Glenn-Copeland and Smith's singing which are, of course, beautiful. At 80, Glenn-Copeland’s voice is clear and strong, and he sounds even more assured than he was at 42 when he released the original “Ever New.” As for Smith, their vocal delivery is flawlessly smooth and drenched in an obvious reverence.
Even absent all of the above context, this version of “Ever New” would be an emotional listening experience for the lyrics alone: “Welcome the bud, the summer blooming flower / Welcome the child whose hand I hold / Welcome to you both young and old / We are ever new, we are ever new.”
But with the knowledge that this is also an ode to renewal from one trans artist to another, it’s an absolutely transcendent listening experience.
Transa will be released in full by Red Hot on Nov. 22.
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