Placebo: listen to the new single "Helen Keller". In concert in Italy in November for a single date

Placebo tie the threads back to their own debut, turning a hidden fragment from thirty years ago into a brand new song. Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal's band have released "Helen Keller", a single born out of "H.K. Farewell", the instrumental track tucked away on their self-titled 1996 debut, just as the tour celebrating their thirty-year career kicks off.
The starting point is the keyboard melody from "H.K. Farewell", salvaged and used as the backbone of an entirely new composition. The atmosphere retains the restless character of the original, but "Helen Keller" carries it into heavier, rougher, markedly more rock territory.

Recorded in London in early 2026, the track was produced by Placebo themselves together with Adam Noble, who also handled the mixing. Molko explained that he started out from the piano line of "H.K. Farewell", then chose to dedicate the new song to one of the historical figures who most fascinated him: Helen Keller, the American writer and activist who, having become deafblind in childhood, established herself as an author and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.
"Helen Keller" thus becomes another piece of the celebrations marking thirty years since Placebo's debut album. Back in June, Molko and Olsdal had already released "Placebo RE", a project born from recovering the original master tapes of their first album: the ten tracks from the 1996 record were reworked alongside "Drowning By Numbers" and "H.K. Farewell" itself. The two musicians described the operation as a kind of "director's cut", designed to pour three decades' worth of live experience back into the old recordings without betraying their original spirit.

The recovery of "H.K. Farewell" thus also becomes a way of ideally closing the circle with the band's beginnings: from a track left on the margins of their debut comes, thirty years later, a standalone song that looks back at the past without settling for a mere nostalgia trip.
The celebrations will continue live. Placebo will also be coming to Italy for a single date: November 6, 2026 at the Unipol Forum in Milan.

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