'The underrated, magical power of music': Leeds conservatoire students pen song for Beijing Winter Olympics

The students were approached to pen the song 'One Dream'.

Lead vocalist and writer Alex Johnston-Seymour, spoke to the YEP to explain where the inspiration behind the lyrics came from.

"I was sent two videos from the documentary to help me write it and I am quite a visual writer, I really like having a full cinematic going on in my brain to allow me to connect with the different senses like sight and temperature." he explained.

"I envisaged skiers and snowboarders because they are so fast paced also ice skaters and I was trying to make it very much about the Olympian."

Alex, alongside lead guitarist and writer of the backing track Nick Kossifou, enjoy writing songs with a political undertone but chose a different route with this year's Winter Olympics being held in Beijing.

"With freedom of speech over here you are allowed to be as political as you want so me and Nick will typically have several layers of politics in our music but we took a more simple approach to this song and made it very unapologetically about the Olympian and their journeys." Alex said.

"We wrote about determination and aspirations, being the best, pushing yourself and everything that I know about being an Olympian having watched it on tv."

The song writing process went through many stages with it being recommended that certain sections of the song be rewritten.

"We had a lyric called avalanche but we changed that as many Olympians have sadly died in avalanches." he explained.

"We also sang about dragons as that is a very prominent thing in Chinese culture and it worked really well but got asked to change it to phoenix as they wanted to market to the West as well and in the West dragons are quite commonly associated with evil."

For Alex music has been a life long passion and the opportunity to pen a song for a worldwide sporting event was to great to turn down.

"I've always wanted to do something for the Olympics and I remember seeing MUSE perform the song in 2012 and I just remember thinking 'wow I would love to do that, I could really write something epic' so when they got in touch with me I just couldn't say no."

Alongside his band mates Nick Kossifou and David Haynes, the bulk of the song was finished within a five day period and Alex explained that the approval of his Chinese classmates meant the most as he was determined to do them proud.

"The Chinese students in my class have becoming really good friends and letting them listen to the song and having them so happy and accepting of the music meant the world really."

The power of music has never been lost on Alex who spoke of how from the age of nine he used it as an outlet following trouble at school and the split of his parents.

"I needed an outlet and I needed a way of expressing what was going on at school so I started writing songs and I became addicted to it." he said.

"'It's the most underrated, magical power I have ever come across. I don't believe in magic but the impact music can have and some of the things it can do is really quite ridiculous."

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