North Hills Middle School choir strikes emotional chord in video of Coldplay's 'Fix You'

Tom Hartwell was attempting to teach his students about compassion and kindness through music. He was also looking to create something special for Highmark Caring Place’s virtual observance of Children’s Grief Awareness Day on Nov. 17.

The North Hills Middle School concert choir director knew he had a talented group and the perfect song, “Fix You” by the British rock band Coldplay, to work with. The song was written and performed by the group’s lead singer Chris Martin for his then-wife Gwyneth Paltrow after the death of her father. It was released in 2005.

Hartwell explained that he had long been a fan of “Fix You” and its emotional lyrics — “And the tears come streaming down your face, when you lose something you can’t replace, when you love someone, but it goes to waste, could it be worse? Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones, and I will try to fix you.”

“I finally sat down and thought to myself, ‘What is this song really about?’” Hartwell said. “And when I learned that (Martin) was trying to help (Paltrow) through the process of grief, it immediately clicked together. The idea of taking that song along with (Grief Awareness Day) was a no-brainer.”

What was slightly more challenging was selling his students on the idea of performing a song by a band most of them knew little or nothing about. According to Hartwell, their initial reaction to hearing “Fix You” for the first time was lukewarm.

“I wish I could say it was like ‘Wow! It was magical. It was wonderful.’ It was more like ‘Okay, I guess it’s what we’re doing,’” Hartwell said.

But for choir member Maura Foltyn, 12, a sixth grader from Ross, the song hit home.

“My grandmother passed away in June,” Foltyn said. “I liked the melody and the words. I thought it was a great way to show people that you’re not alone when you’re going through this and that there is always somebody who still stands by you and helps you get through it.”

Choir member Anna Kroll, 13, an eighth grader from Ross, said she had an emotional reaction to “Fix You.”

“I have lost my great aunt and she was close to me,” Kroll said. “(The song) sounded like it could be very meaningful to anyone. I knew it was going to be something special. A lot of people could relate to it by the way the words were placed. It just says that we’re not all the same, but we could grieve in our own ways.”

Another Choir member, seventh grader Elyanna Manse, 12, of Ross, liked the idea of a song written specifically for people who are grieving.

“I thought of all the people who have lost somebody and how hard it is on them,” Manse said. “I was excited because it was a nice way of showing people that we cared and everything will be okay and there are a lot of people who are here for them.”

The North Hills Middle School choir members said performing such an emotional piece inspired spontaneous interactions among the performers.

Hartwell described it as the moment he realized the video was going to work.

“There were some students that came in and they were having a rough morning,” he said. “They had just announced callbacks for the musical ‘Into the Woods’ and there were a bunch of students who didn’t get called back. Another student came in who had to say good-bye to her grandmother the night before.

“The kids were just struggling. So, we get ready to sing and I made the comment that ‘we all deal with grief in our own way and we all have things that are really difficult in our lives and there might be somebody next to you who’s having a difficult time as we sing this. So, just be aware of that as we practice it together.’”

As they were singing during the recording, Hartwell watched the students turn to each other and share hugs. It turned out to be a serendipitous and moving scene in the video that ended up making the final cut.

“I think what the kids rallied behind was the message and the promise that through their music they might be able to help another person,” Hartwell said. “I think there were plenty of kids who were skeptical about that at the beginning but after you begin to practice the piece and you begin to work through the words and sing it together, there’s something special that’s happening there. I think everybody could feel that.”

During a guitar solo at about the midway point of the song, (they sang to the Coldplay music bed minus Martin’s vocals) the choir members held up signs with messages of encouragement and dedications to loved ones.

“Later on when I watched the video myself, I thought ‘Wow, I got to collaborate with other people and I got to have that moment of being around other people that have been through what I have been through and being able to sing a song with them that we can all relate to,’” Foltyn said.

The video was elegant in its simplicity and recorded as a straight performance piece with the choir assembled on a staircase in the school building. Hartwell edited the video himself. It can be seen on YouTube and has been viewed hundreds of times and is receiving positive reactions.

“Anyone that I have been around that has seen the video, they have always congratulated me on it,” Foltyn said. “And they have said things like ‘that video touched me so hard and I started to cry whenever I watched it.’”

Hartwell said that he has also received a lot of positive feedback about the video.

“It’s great to hear the positive feedback but what really matters is what we do day to day and that we take the idea of this piece with us moving forward,” he said. “How we live it out in our daily lives is what’s important.”