Bob Marley would’ve been 75 years old today if he was still alive.
The new animated video for Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” which was released by his estate yesterday, has been receiving rave reviews from fans of the Reggae legend, who would have turned 75 today. The images featured in the video were drawn by French artists Octave Marsal and Theo De Gueltzl, to aid in telling the song’s story of emancipation. His daughter, Cedella Marley, told Billboard Magazine that Marley’s estate went through a six-month process with Marsal and De Gueltzl, going through the artwork “page by page, looking at stuff and approving it all.”
According to Cedella, the video came out amazing. “When I watch it, it still gives me goosebumps,” she said.
“Redemption Song” was featured on Marley’s final studio album, “Uprising,” which was released in 1980. It was his last record before he died of cancer in May 1981. It was also the final track on Uprising, which was Bob Marley and the Wailers’ ninth album.
In 2014 Redemption Song was ranked 66th amongst Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2010, the New Statesman also listed it as one of the Top 20 Political Songs.
The song’s title was also used as the headline for an article published in The Economist magazine on November 9 last year about Jamaica’s economic recovery. It was also recently used at the forefront of a demonstration in India by musicians who sought to raise their voices against a citizenship law.
On January 3 this year, Popdust music magazine listed Redemption Song at number three of the Seven Best anti-war songs, and dubbed Marley as being “one of few voices to capture the fear of war and spin it into something like hope”, noting that “Redemption Song is timeless and of its time”.
Redemption Song’s lyrics were partially inspired by Jamaica’s first National Hero, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, who uttered some of the lines, later used in the song, in his speech titled ‘The Work That Has Been Done.’ Marley, who was born in Nine Miles, St. Ann, penned the song in 1979 after he became afflicted with cancer.
