The UK singer Jorja Smith just released a video for her 2016 topical single “Blue Lights”. The tune will also be featured on her debut album Lost & Found which is due out June 8, 2018.
The video for the poignant anti-police brutality tune contains powerful visuals that humanizes the black lives that are wrongfully perceived as a threat by the police. The song lyrics point out that “if you’ve done nothing wrong / blue lights should just pass you by” but sadly reality is often different. The lyrics contain two separate schools of thought, on one hand “Don’t you run when you hear the sirens coming” on the other hand “Run when you hear the sirens coming”. There is a tendency when a black person is shot or wrongfully arrested that there must be more to the story. But the tragic reality is that even when someone is innocent and they don’t run and don’t resist there is no guarantees.