Just think about what a country feels when it has for decades been a “star assistant,” and now is preparing to step onto the main stage? For Canada, 2026 will become precisely such a moment of triumph. Jeremy Hansen will fly around the Moon as part of the Artemis II crew – and the country, accustomed to being quietly proud of its achievements, now does not restrain its emotions.
Photo by Adam Moco
Emm Gryner is doing the same thing, but in her own way: as a person who sees in flight a technological poem about resilience and solidarity. A popular singer of the Canadian indie scene, a woman who has worked with David Bowie and released more than twenty albums, written a bestseller – she chose this very moment and wrote a song about Jeremy Hansen. In the new single “Touch The Sky” there sounds a conversation about humanity – about what remains between steel and vacuum. It is built on two parallel narratives intertwined into a single whole: the astronaut’s personal path and the emotional connection with those who remain on Earth.
Where others might have slipped into the pathos of stadium rock, Gryner chooses a subtler matter. The production by Steven MacKinnon and the mixing by Greg Wells create a hermetic, boundless space. Everything is built on a confident, pulsating rhythm reminiscent of the operation of life support systems, over which Emm’s vocals lie – crystal clear, without any gimmicks. Her voice lives through the text, staying on the edge between restraint and fragility. When she sings about the abyss, one hears an admission of fear. When about the connection with home – warmth without sentimentality. Written in collaboration with poet Michael Holmes, the lyrics avoid technical terms, focusing on the human factor: perseverance and, yes, horror in the face of the abyss. One feels the dizzying loneliness that a person experiences in a capsule flying at a speed of thousands of kilometers per hour. Along with the single comes a video directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick. The video acts as an emotional anchor – Petrick mixes footage of Emm performing in a small club in Sarnia with archival home videos of the Hansen family. The contrast between the scale of the mission and the intimacy gives a rare emotion: grandeur refracted through the reality of life.
Photo by the Jeremy Hansen family
Against the background of what is actively promoted today, the single “Touch The Sky” looks provocatively substantial, and I think this speaks of the talent and craft of its authors. 100% of the revenue from digital streaming will go to the Bluewater Health Foundation, and a limited edition of physical copies will go to fans through Kickstarter. Such a gesture turns a commercial release into a common cause – and a rare case when a song about “reaching heights” becomes an honest and beautiful look upward.
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