The Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward reflects on youthful innocence with his folky new single, “Living for Love.”

“I’m driving through the land we knew to find that sacred ground / Where moonlight on the innocence, wildest dreams were found,” he sings over strummed acoustic guitar and airy synth pads. “We lay there ’til the break of day, lovers me and you / I had to give my heart away; what else could I do?”

You can watch the lyric video below.

Hayward detailed the inspiration behind “Living for Love” on his website, writing, “I’m one of a generation that as teenagers if we were lucky, were living just for love; with the most wonderful music, freedom and optimism. We didn’t really understand at the time, but I have to celebrate those days now, while we are still here, and we remember.”

The track — recorded earlier in 2022 with collaborator Alberto Parodi in Italy — is out ahead of Hayward’s upcoming U.K. tour, the Voice of the Moody Blues, which launches Sept. 11

“Living for Love” arrives two years after the songwriter’s EP One Summer Day/My Juliette. He hasn’t released a full-length album since 2013’s Spirits of the Western Sky.

The Moody Blues, meanwhile, have been inactive since 2018, the year they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Co-founding drummer Graeme Edge died in November 2021 at age 80.

“I don’t think there’ll be anything with the Moodys,” singer and bassist John Lodge told UCR in May 2021. “I know the Moodys won’t tour again. I would tour, but I know Justin [Hayward] doesn’t want to tour with the Moodys, so it won’t happen.”