Raine Hamilton shines in her queer love song “Love Has Come for Me,” an intimate and moving anthem of radical self-love and acceptance that celebrates who we are for who we are; you are you, and we are beautiful just the way we are.
Stream: “Love Has Come For Me” – Raine Hamilton
When I was writing this song, I was shining that light around inside, seeing who had been left behind, and I rediscovered some parts of myself that I had long ignored. For me, that discovery had a lot to do with queerness, and finding my way to deep love of that part.
Self-acceptance – loving yourself unapologetically for who you are, with no exceptions – should be a universal and inalienable right; it should be something that we are taught at home, that gets reinforced in school, and is celebrated throughout culture and society. Alas, we don’t yet live in that world; the landscape of 2021 is full of “norms” and “ideals”; of expectations and pressures to look, act, talk, and behave in certain ways, based on the pre-determined categories into which you fall. We are still learning; learning from the past’s mistakes, and learning from the open-mindedness of our younger generations, who willfully (and inspiringly so) challenge the status quo and continue to shape the future.
Into this world of progressive growth comes singer/songwriter Raine Hamilton’s queer love song “Love Has Come for Me,” an intimate and moving anthem of radical self-love and acceptance that celebrates who we are for who we are; you are you, and we are beautiful just the way we are. As deeply personal as it is universal, it’s a reminder that self-acceptance isn’t yet an inalienable right – not in this society; not yet – and that we should continue to emphasize the importance of self-love, and recognize how special it is when someone gets there.
It’s the heavy lifting of the soul
It’s when to rock and when to roll
It’s all the senses here combined to tell me
To pay attention to the news
To talk show headlines with the clues
Of how to be and how to stay courageous
Tell me the night has come
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Love Has Come for Me,” the latest single taken off Raine Hamilton’s forthcoming album, Brave Land. A multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter from Winnipeg, Canada, Hamilton is no stranger to intimate or compelling music. In premiering her sophomore album Night Sky in 2018, Atwood Magazine praised her as “a songwriter the likes of which we seldom see in the 21st Century: Her writing flexes our funny bones as well as our tear ducts, driving us to embrace life’s highs and lows at the very same time.”
A dramatic, poignant, insightful and engaging collection of songs performed alongside cello and double bass, with Raine on violin or guitar, Night Sky‘s music is the sort that shoots shivers down the spine – and the same can be said of “Brave Land,” whose six singles (released once a month over the past six months) have made the first half of 2021 shine with stirring, evocative chamber folk.
Following May’s mesmerizing release “It Matters,” “Love Has Come for Me” finds Hamilton shining full of warm harmony, expressive violin work, and touching lyricism. It’s a beautiful embrace of the self, and of the chamber folk sound that has long defined Hamilton’s oeuvre. For the artist, much of this song has to do with her own queerness, and finding her love for herself.
“When I was writing this song, I was shining that light around inside, seeing who had been left behind, and I rediscovered some parts of myself that I had long ignored,” she explains. “For me, that discovery had a lot to do with queerness, and finding my way to deep love of that part.”
Hamilton pours her love out in a heartfelt chorus. Her voice radiant and bright, she sings for herself and everyone else who needs to hear it:
Love has come for me
Has come for me
Love has come for me
Has come for me
“I am proud to share this anthem of radical self-love. I am proud and delighted that I have come to love myself – including my queerness – so completely,” Raine Hamilton tells Atwood Magazine. “I am sad that it was ever a question.”
“This song is a queer love song I wrote to myself. It is a song for the forgotten parts, whatever they may be. It is a song of celebration and radical love of the self. I want the world to be a place where we are safe and celebrated to show up as we really are. I just know that a world full of authentic selves is amazing, full of life, satisfaction, and joy. I just know it. This is me showing up.”
To all the parts that kept me safe
To all that led me to the place
Where I could let it go and let it lie
I thank you by my Maker’s hand
Knowing what I did not know,
That I might stand here, willing to receive it
(space), when the night has come
Love has come for me
Has come for me
Love has come for me
Has come for me
I want the world to be a place where we are safe and celebrated to show up as we really are. I just know that a world full of authentic selves is amazing, full of life, satisfaction, and joy.
I believe in a world where our children are taught from a young age that they are beautiful and perfect just the way they are; a world where the concept of “your best self” is individualized to every person, and not some collective Olympian ideal of “what makes a man, a man,” “what makes a woman, a woman,” etc etc. Songs like “Love Has Come for Me” remind us that there is work yet to be done, but that we are on the right path; that we are, however slowly, making progress, even if it may not always feel that way – because every time someone comes to love themselves, and makes the decision to embrace self-love over hate or fear, constitutes a positive step forward.
Stream Raine Hamilton’s “Love Has Come for Me” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and stay tuned for more to come from her forthcoming album Brave Land. This is a special song, and it deserves to be heard, felt, and sung out loud and proud.
And I know this face
And I’ve walked these floors
And I know that I should name it
beholding so spectacular a thing
And I see that I can hold it all
It comes to fill the space that I’m within
What if I could hold/heal you there
Lend comfort to your tried and loving heart
that will come to know the difference
Points of light that amplify
That resonate, a sympathetic thought
The kind of thing that tears the walls down
Love has come for me
Has come for me
Love has come for me
Has come for me
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Stream: “Love Has Come For Me” – Raine Hamilton
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