As any pet owner knows, the relationship between people and our pawed friends changes dramatically over time and the love between a pet and its owner is a unique one – and often responsible for saving one in challenging times. This is something that Andrew Spice shared with his late, beloved cat Bea, who he pays tribute to with his new single Gentle Sentinel.
Andrew Spice
Gentle Sentinel is a touching, delicate ballad which conveys the love that Andrew and Bea had. His soft tender voice, plaintive piano and a stirring string arrangement by the GRAMMY® nominee Drew Jurecka (Dua Lipa’s ‘Don’t Stop Now’) tells the tale of a ‘Gentle Sentinel’ who provided a support that wasn’t “quite humanly” but was just as powerful as an embrace from a loved one. The pair spent almost twenty years together across three different cities. Watch the official video below:
Andrew’s 2003 OutMusic Award-nominated debut album Pretty Demons made him one of Canada’s brightest new talents, but his life trajectory took a different turn and this became the first song that he wrote after 15 years.
He says, “Gentle Sentinel is the first song I wrote in 15 years, and that brought me back to music after my very long hiatus. It is a ballad for my cat, Bea, who was 18 years old when the song was written and who has sadly since passed away. It is in essence about the ways that our animal companions uniquely and unconditionally help us through grief.”
Written by Andrew and produced by his regular collaborator, the Juno Award-nominated Matthew Barber, Gentle Sentinel is the beating heart of his upcoming second album. His friend, the David Bowie associate Emm Grynor, set him the challenge of writing a single one-minute song to respark his talents, which led to the initial version of this song.
From there he was inspired: twenty years of life’s highs-and-lows together with vast experience as a clinical psychologist and a new desire to write songs opened the floodgates. Soon he had songs spanning betrayal to new-found love; from sorrow to remembrance; from anger to tenderness. He confronted those vulnerabilities head-on, sometimes crashing into devastatingly raw emotions and in others finding some dark humour in the circumstances. This is the third single in Andrew’s 2.0 era, following Rage Stage and High Park.
New music also coincided with a new chapter in his life. In 2022 he started a new relationship with Adam Moço, also known as Canada’s Drag Race star Miss Moço, leading to their marriage in 2024. Their story and wedding was covered in depth by Toronto Life magazine.
Loreen Dazzles Beyond Eurovision Magic At London’s Hammersmith Apollo
Share Thing