I tend to write about music videos more frequently than I write about music. But this weekend is a special occasion: One of my best friends in the world is getting married on Saturday. In his honor, and in the spirit of the occasion, I wanted to spend some time talking about a song that has been a subject of conversation between us for more than a decade, “I Need You To Survive,” as performed by Hezekiah Walker and the Love Fellowship Choir.
I heard “I Need You to Survive” for the first time at Sunday services at Varick Memorial AME Zion Church in New Haven, Conn. During the time I was an occasional visitor to the church, it was the custom for the choir to sing this song during the welcoming, and these were not the sort of dry handshakes you share with the people in your pew before you get back to services. Every single person greeted everyone else who was attending services that morning, and the choir sang its way through endless loops of “I Need You to Survive” until all present had been sufficiently taken up into the arms of the congregation.
If that sounds repetitive or boring, you’re wrong in ways that get to the heart of what makes “I Need You to Survive” such a powerful song.
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It’s a deceptively simple track. The instrumentation — which is calibrated not to overwhelm the vocals and at one point cuts away completely — mostly consists of piano and some very subtle percussion. There are really only 88 words in “I Need You to Survive,” repeated over and over. The chorus sings in unison, cued by Walker’s directions, which become more complex as the song goes on; it’s call-and-response, it’s commentary, it’s praise. The voices get louder and firmer as Walker guides them forward, and by the time he tells the choir miembers “Let’s do it without no music” around the six-minute mark in the recording, the incantation has become a shout. He tells them to make the song personal, instructing the choir to point at fellow members and promise not to harm them. And after that moment of tension, the song releases you, taking you down slowly like the slow dissipation of a protest march, like settling into the quiet and safety of bed with someone you love.
“I Need You to Survive” is certainly a religious song, but for a piece of music that assures listeners that “It is His will that every need be supplied,” it’s centered on the idea that humans have profound responsibilities to each other. The singers pledge “I won’t harm you / With words from my mouth.” They promise to pray for each other. And each of these vows culminates in the restatement of an almost stunningly intimate idea: that “I love you / I need you to survive.” That last line hits as hard as it does not least because it has a double meaning. It can be read to suggest that the speaker can’t go on living without the object of the song, or to demand that the listener live for himself.
If “I Need You to Survive” is situated squarely on the line between romantic and spiritual love that makes gospel such a compelling musical genre, it’s also about the territory that personal relationships and political movements have in common. Telling someone “I need you to survive” is such a raw statement that’s it feels almost obscene to utter aloud. But beyond our Romeo and Juliet years, there’s a more sober, mature reality to that sentiment as well: Marriages and long-term partnerships are about building something far more audacious than either person could create or sustain alone. And that’s what true political organizing is about as well, the idea that we can’t survive unless we work together to force into being a world that will truly nurture us.
Whether we’re seeking safety from a turbulent, violent country in each other, or striding into the maelstrom to fight the storm, the ideas of “I Need You to Survive” are sentimental, and bold, and utterly necessary.
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