Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write. Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday. I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again. This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary. Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe. Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then. On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left. Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late. Joe’s body was never found. Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe. As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since. My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew. Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release
Welcome to you tube reactions, dude. you did a great job!! and you picked a beautiful place to start. ren has large catalog. ren's video "hi ren" is a great starting place. i'll be back. much love, kathleen - bts renegade
You should also check out Ren's earlier songs "Freckled Angels" and "Su!cIde" that appear in part in this song. They're all inspired by Ren's childhood friend Joe Hughes who died in 2010. Ren performed "Freckled Angels" at Joe's funeral, which is reprised at the end of "For Joe", and he added an extra part to his song "Su!cIde" just before its release after talking about Joe's death in his interview with Knox Hill which is repeated in the first part of "For Joe".
Nice job buddy, enjoyed your reaction. I see you rap so may e try Rens rap songs, Losing it, what you want and power. I hit the sub button, see you again.
You definitely need to fall down the Ren rabbit hole, my next suggestion would be Hi Ren, it was my first, and it's very personal to me, actually helped me a lot, hope you enjoy it and that it makes you think 😉
Check out his duets with Chinchilla (How to Be Me (Live) and Chalk Outlines (live)) and Chinchilla's Little Girl Gone and Fingers..... A lot to look at here. Nice Job.
Well done, thank you! Keep it up! Friendly feedback: please pump up the volume on your mic, and/or get closer to it. We want to hear your thoughts more clearly...
The bottle with lights is his friend Joe's bright light shining on still! "Burn, burn, burn ......on". Great job!
that makes more sense thank you!! video coming up today...
Ren is a great artist and I hope that his star shines bright for a long time for everyone to see. You did a great heartfelt review .
Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write.
Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday.
I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again.
This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary.
Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe.
Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then.
On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left.
Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late.
Joe’s body was never found.
Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe.
As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew.
Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release
An explanation maybe is in order. The above text is taken from Ren’s page. He put that out there just before dropping this song
@@REN4evaright?
thank you for reacting to my favourite artist ever more Ren please you wont be disappointed ❤❤❤
Ofc man we got whole lot coming
Welcome to you tube reactions, dude. you did a great job!! and you picked a beautiful place to start. ren has large catalog. ren's video "hi ren" is a great starting place. i'll be back. much love, kathleen - bts renegade
Thank you for this reaction, I feel Ren's pain here, as I lost my little brother to his own decision... your genuine heart was felt through this.
Stick with Ren and we'll be behind you my friend 🤜🏻🤛
this from Ren community page if u want to read it about his friend and when they first meet
What a hard first Ren song to start with. Much of Ren's catalogue is deep and sad - But there's also many upbeat tracks too. ❤
Nice work, keep going 👍
Come on man... do more Ren! I'm here for it 💚
good job young man. ill keep an eye out for your stuff
You should also check out Ren's earlier songs "Freckled Angels" and "Su!cIde" that appear in part in this song. They're all inspired by Ren's childhood friend Joe Hughes who died in 2010. Ren performed "Freckled Angels" at Joe's funeral, which is reprised at the end of "For Joe", and he added an extra part to his song "Su!cIde" just before its release after talking about Joe's death in his interview with Knox Hill which is repeated in the first part of "For Joe".
Just found your channel and saw you are just kinda starting so props. Glad you found Ren. Keep it going and don’t give up
Thankyouu im gonna have to take a break tho just cause of service
Here we go 😜
You need to drop down the Ren rabbit hole and join us there. He is just unique❤❤❤
🎶🎶💖💛👌
Nice job buddy, enjoyed your reaction. I see you rap so may e try Rens rap songs, Losing it, what you want and power. I hit the sub button, see you again.
I will check it out!!
More Ren!!!!
I got you!!
You definitely need to fall down the Ren rabbit hole, my next suggestion would be Hi Ren, it was my first, and it's very personal to me, actually helped me a lot, hope you enjoy it and that it makes you think 😉
Welcome to the #RENaissance where #Ren is the #RENicornKing 🦄 👑
#RENegades ❤
Check out his duets with Chinchilla (How to Be Me (Live) and Chalk Outlines (live)) and Chinchilla's Little Girl Gone and Fingers..... A lot to look at here. Nice Job.
Well done, thank you! Keep it up!
Friendly feedback: please pump up the volume on your mic, and/or get closer to it. We want to hear your thoughts more clearly...
Thanks for the tips!
I've subbed ❤