Rise Up (Parachute Club song)

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"Rise Up" is a pop song recorded by the Canadian group Parachute Club on their self-titled 1983 album. It was produced and engineered by Daniel Lanois. It remains Parachute Club's best-known song.

An upbeat call for peace, celebration, and "freedom / to love who we please," the song was a national hit in Canada, and was quickly adopted as a gay anthem. "Rise Up" remains a widely-remembered 1980s standard, gay anthem, and positive inspirational song in Canada.

The song won a 1984 Juno Award for Single of the Year, over fellow nominees "Cuts Like a Knife" and "Straight from the Heart" by Bryan Adams, "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart, and "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats.

In the late 1990s, the song was licensed by McCain Foods Limited for a television commercial for self-rising pizza dough. Members of the Parachute Club, who had not retained the rights, publicly opposed this commercial use of a song "embraced for its celebration of the spirit of freedom." [1]

In his 2003 run for the leadership of the federal New Democratic Party, Jack Layton asked Lorraine Segato, who had been lead singer of the Parachute Club, for permission to use "Rise Up" in his campaign. "Over the years," said Segato, "many political parties have either used or wanted to use the song 'Rise Up' for their campaign. Most of the time, they don't ask. They just use it until you say no. Well, Jack asked to use our song and I said, Forget it, we'll write you your own anthem." Segato, with Richard Underhill and Lynne Fernie, penned a new song, "Bringing All The Voices Together." While distinct in music and lyrics, it was identified as something of a sequel to "Rise Up." "It's a new version of Rise Up, not the lyrics but the spirit," Layton said. [2]

In 2005, the CBC Radio series 50 Tracks: The Canadian Version, based on nominations by panelists and listeners, semi-final elimination votes among songs from the same decade and a final national vote to rank the top 50, selected Rise Up as number 44 of the 50 most essential songs in Canadian popular music history.