Simple Minds release new single ahead of premier of career-spanning documentary on BBC

Today, Simple Minds release their new single ‘Your Name in Lights’, taken from the soundtrack to their critically acclaimed documentary ‘Everything Is Possible’.

Written in collaboration with writer and producer Paul Statham, Simple Minds set out to match the film’s ambience whilst recapturing the innocent spirit of their early days; "when we were ‘wee boys’ playing around with our synthesisers,” says the band’s Jim Kerr, “proudly wearing our Kraftwerk and Brian Eno influences on our sleeve."

The resultant track mirrors a style that Simple Minds previously produced on their 1979 Reel To Real Cacophony album, with an accompanying lyric which, as Kerr puts it, “conjures up a ‘Dreamer’s conversation with a distant Muse’ – that Muse being Aretha Franklin as sung by Sarah Brown.”

Later on this evening, Simple Minds’ career-spanning document ‘Everything Is Possible’ will air on BBC Scotland at 10pm. The documentary takes the viewer on an extraordinary journey. From the band’s isolated beginnings in late 1970s Glasgow, to their early groundbreaking and pioneering albums, through to their stratospheric ascent in the mid to late 1980s, and the subsequently challenging later years and triumphant rebirth over the past decade.

Along the way the film features candid interviews with band members including Simple Minds’ founders, singer Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill, as well as a cast of outstanding musicians, writers, actors and broadcasters: Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri, Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof, The Specials and 2-Tone founder Jerry Dammers, Irvine Welsh, Molly Ringwald (The Breakfast Club), broadcasters Murial Gray and Mariella Frostrup, and album producers John Leckie, Peter Walsh, Trevor Horn and Jimmy Iovine.

The overarching theme of the film is the lifelong friendship at the core of the group, that of Kerr and Burchill. Forged at the top of a sand castle on a new housing scheme in 1967, this remarkable relationship has spanned seven decades, making it an integral part of Simple Minds’ exceptional story.