Former Australian Idol winner Wes Carr has penned a touching acoustic song called I Pray, about the Sydney siege which saw two hostages and a gunman lose their lives early Tuesday morning. The South Australian has uploaded a video of himself playing the song to Facebook, and has amassed roughly 39,000 likes in the last 22 hours.
I Pray (below) is a gentle guitar ballad, which Carr wrote an hour before his post. In it he sings of his heartbreak for the victims and for the troubled perpetrator. “And I pray / For the 15 people that were locked in that cafe / For their families and for change / For the gunman who was lead astray, by his own fear, evil and hate,” Carr sings in the track’s chorus.
Lyrically, the song also sees Carr separating the events in Sydney from questions of religious motivation. “This has nothing to do with religion / It’s one man’s madness and confusion / It doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, Buddhist, Atheist or Muslim, we are all one type of human,” he sings.
Carr, who won the sixth season of Australian Idol in 2008, also posted the song’s lyrics to Facebook, with an accompanying message reflecting on the song and what drove him to write it.
“Today I have so many questions, so much on my mind. I woke with a feeling of confusion, uneasiness,” Carr wrote. “Right now I’m meant to be rehearsing for my up and coming show about George Harrison, by I had something bottled up inside of my heart, I couldn’t ignore the feeling and then this song just poured out of me.”
In a follow-up Facebook post this morning (below), Carr has thanked fans for sharing his song. “I am so deeply humbled my song ‘I Pray’ has resonated with so many,” he wrote.
“To the lives lost in the madness that transpired in Sydney, Rest In Peace. To their families we send you all strength. To the insanity that is happening all around the world, we will OVERCOME it with pure, positive LOVE and strength.”
Wes Carr has released three studio albums to date, his latest being 2013’s Roadtrip Confessions. View his two Facebook posts in full alongside his performance of I Pray, below.
