Bayside, the poppy New York alt-punk group led by singer and guitarist Anthony Raneri, have released a new cover version of pop star Kacey Musgraves‘ uplifting 2019 single “Rainbow” to celebrate LGBT Pride Month in the U.S. for June 2022.
All royalties from downloads and streaming of the Bayside version, which emerged on Tuesday (June 28), will be donated to The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, the band explained.
Listen to the cover song near the bottom of this post.
“As Pride Month comes to a close we want everyone in the LGBTQ+ community to know that you have our love and support not only this month but every month,” Bayside said in a press release on Tuesday.
“To celebrate and show our support,” the group added, “We recently recorded one of our favorite songs, ‘Rainbow’ by Kacey Musgraves. We are donating all royalties. … Everyone deserves to be safe, loved, and seen for the person that they are.”
For Musgraves, “Rainbow” began as an encouraging note the country-turned-pop singer was inspired to write to herself after reading her horoscope, Taste of Country shared in 2019. The piano ballad that closes Musgrave’s Golden Hour has since become an anthem of personal endurance for many listeners.
“For a long time, that was a really hard one to hear,” Musgraves explained in a 2018 interview. “But I thought that it fit really nicely on the record. It turned into a song as a little message to myself, and then ended up being a song for anybody with any kind of weight on their shoulders.”
Bayside’s latest original release is 2020’s Acoustic Volume 3 EP, which centers on re-worked acoustic versions of the group’s past songs after two preceding volumes that took the same approach. It followed Bayside’s most recent studio album, 2019’s Interrobang.
Bayside, “Rainbow” (Kacey Musgraves Cover)
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Take a closer look and listen.