Focusing on LGBTQ+ rights and driven by a desire to explore and to expose, Tillmans’ latest song finds hopeful defiance in the face of uncertain, menacing futures. One can hear his voice wavering ever so slightly as he admonishes the listener (and perhaps himself) to “just hold on, just be strong, just be strong”. His delicate singing of this simple line shows his own unwillingness to dispense absolute instructions absolutely. The song’s title – which he repeats throughout the infectious chorus, along with the line “no turning back the clocks” – becomes less a declaration of fact than a declaration of resistance, a clarion call during a moment when so many clocks are being turned back.
“I made this song holding on to a hopeful spirit in alarming times, when in many countries around the globe civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights are being challenged and increasingly overturned. Some paint a rosy picture of the past whilst forgetting that many people simply were not free, and inequalities were rampant. When I thought about those views of the past, the chorus including ‘no turning back the clocks’ came to me, thinking in solidarity; ‘We can’t possibly want to return to those times, however nostalgic we might feel about parts of them”.
