The soft sounding folksy duo, She & Him have gone a whole 5 years of not releasing original music. Their last releases were Classics in 2014 and Christmas Party in 2016, which both only featured covers of old favorites. Their last original music was released with 2013’s Volume 3, until now.
The new heartwarming songs, “She Gives Her Love to Me” and “He Gives His Love to Me” are part of an even sweeter project. The pair is contributing the songs to a compilation EP called Universal Love, where artists like Bob Dylan, St. Vincent, Death Cab for Cutie and others have compiled a list of remixed wedding songs to make them applicable for a variety of couples.
The goal of the EP is to make these wedding classics more inclusive to same-sex couples by changing around pronouns. For M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel of She & Him, these songs fit right into the light-hearted and romantic mood of their previously released music with warm guitar riffs and whimsical harmonies.
The two songs, “She Gives Her Love to Me” and “He Gives His Love to Me” are two alternating versions of the same track to show different perspectives of being in love, which adds to the overall theme of the EP. Both songs, feature both Deschanel singing the same tune, but with alternating pronouns from “he” to she.”
“What drew us to this project is that it opens up new ways of thinking about songwriting. It would be amazing if our songs help to inspire other artists to engage with lyrics in a more open, and inclusive way,” Deschanel and Ward told Rolling Stone.
Universal Love – Wedding Songs Reimagined playlist: