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Peter Frampton Rescued A Bird, And Now There's A Song About It

If you were around when Peter Frampton released his 1976 album Frampton Comes Alive! — a live record which sold more than eight million copies in the U.S. alone — then congratulations! You've lived long enough to hear the rock star sing a sweetly moving, mostly acoustic song about the time he rescued an ailing bird.

Frampton's most recent recordings have recast the singer-guitarist as a gentler acoustic chronicler of life, but his softly accented charm and charisma remain intact. In "I Saved A Bird Today," well, the story is implied in the title. But Frampton had more to say via email.

"'I Saved A Bird Today' is a true story about me saving a large bird, an American Coot who flew into my window and knocked herself out," he writes. "Then how, with expert advice, I brought her back to life. After learning that Coots only take off from water, I had to 'take her to the river.' She jumped into the river as I watched her walk, then run atop the water until she finally took off into the city-lit night sky."

Frampton added a few kind words about the production company dreambear, which created a lovely video for the song with the aid of animators Antonio Corral and Manuel Casares. "Dreambear," he writes, "have made an incredible animation from this true story. Yes, it's about saving a bird's life. But it's about so much more, as depicted so beautifully in this video. 'To care for one another is the reason we are here' is the lyric that sums it up for me. The world has gone mad, and the simple things like love, compassion and caring have been overshadowed by hate and greed. This video shows how important we are to each other whilst showing how much worse things could get if we are not careful of each other and the planet where we live."

"I Saved A Bird Today" is out now.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)