SAULT / Untitled (Rise) / 2020
Son Shine
solemn, hopeful, meditative
A short, incantatory gospel-house prayer that uses the pun on 'son/sun' to fuse spiritual yearning with communal resilience. Built from repeated affirmations rather than narrative, it functions more as a chant or blessing than a story, which fits the album's broader project of collective uplift during a moment of racial reckoning in 2020.
spiritual endurance collective resilience faith amid suffering divine protection renewal
Who's speaking
A communal voice speaking as 'we' and 'I' interchangeably, addressing a divine or ancestral 'son/sun' figure; the tone is sincere and devotional rather than ironic or uncertain, giving the sense of a congregation praying together.
What happens
There isn't a conventional story arc; instead the song moves through stages of invocation, lament, reassurance, and affirmation. It opens asking for light, acknowledges pain and divine sorrow, asserts that protection is already present, and closes by repeating the opening plea with an added sense of chosenness and rising.
How it's built
The song is built on short cyclical phrases rather than verse-chorus distinction in the traditional pop sense. Lines repeat and layer, especially the 'your love's protecting me' refrain, which functions almost like a mantra building intensity through repetition rather than melodic development. The piece circles back to its opening lines at the end, reinforcing a sense of ritual continuity rather than resolution.
Section by section
Opening invocation
“I think that God's crying”
The song opens with a request for light and immediately complicates it by imagining divine weeping in the rain, establishing that comfort is being sought precisely because suffering is assumed to be shared even by God.
Transitional lines
“one day things have to change”
These fragmentary lines about change and a missing piece feel almost like interior murmurs, gesturing toward incompleteness and the belief that transformation is inevitable even if its shape is unclear.
Central refrain
“Your love's protecting me”
The repeated assurance of being protected becomes the emotional anchor of the song. Its repetition doesn't advance an argument so much as settle the listener into a trance-like certainty, the lyrical equivalent of a held note.
Closing return
“people of the son, you're the chosen one”
The final section reintroduces the opening plea but now frames the audience collectively as chosen, shifting the prayer from personal need to group affirmation and ending on the promise of rising rather than resolution of pain.
Craft
- homophonic pun
- The title's play on 'son' and 'sun' merges religious imagery (son of God, sonship) with natural imagery (sunlight), suggesting that divine love and literal warmth/light are one and the same force offering relief.
- anaphora
- Repeated openings like 'let the son shine' and the repeated protection line create a chant-like insistence, mimicking the function of gospel call-and-response and reinforcing communal solidarity.
- personification
- Rain is reframed as divine grief, giving weather an emotional interiority that mirrors the speaker's own pain and links personal suffering to a cosmic or spiritual sorrow.
- minimalist repetition as structure
- Rather than narrative development, meaning accumulates through the sheer repetition of a few phrases, which slowly shift in emotional weight as they recur.
Reading it
The most direct reading treats this as a gospel-inflected spiritual: 'son' invokes Christ or a divine son-figure whose light offsets suffering symbolized by rain and crying. A complementary reading, given Sault's association with Black liberation themes on this album, hears 'son' as addressing Black listeners directly—'people of the son' as the chosen community enduring historical pain and asserting eventual rising, merging religious language with sociopolitical solidarity. Both readings coexist without contradiction; the song's power lies in letting literal and metaphorical light bleed into each other.
Context
This track appears on 'Untitled (Rise)', released by Sault in 2020 following 'Untitled (Black Is)', both widely understood as responses to the global Black Lives Matter movement that year. While I don't have confirmed biographical detail on the song's composition, the album's framing as a communal, uplifting counterpart to its more somber predecessor supports a reading of this song as a hymn of resilience aimed at a specific community rather than a purely private devotional piece.
Listen for
- the layering and repetition of the 'your love's protecting me' line and how it builds through accumulation rather than melodic variation
- the call-and-response bracketed phrase about being 'the chosen one' functioning like a congregational response
- the contrast between the gentle, chant-like vocal delivery and the weighty spiritual claims being made
- the way the song resists a clear ending, instead looping back to its opening plea, suggesting ongoing ritual rather than resolution
About SAULT
Sault are a British music group that make a mixture of R&B, urban contemporary gospel, house and disco. The project is helmed by producer Inflo and lead vocalist and songwriter Cleo Sol.
2019 - present / London
Full biography and catalogue