Background
"Unplayed Piano" was released as a single by Hannigan and Rice to support the Free Aung San Suu Kyi 60th Birthday campaign which was running at the time. Aung San Suu Kyi is a Nobel Peace Prize winner who had been under house arrest in Burma for various periods from 2002 to 2010. She was previously placed under house arrest by the country's ruling military junta in the former capital, Yangon on 19 July 1989 under martial law that allows for detention without charge or trial for three years. She was released on 10 July 1995 but re-arrested on 23 September 2000. On 6 May 2002 she was freed after nineteen months but on 30 May 2003, following the Depayin massacre she was held in secret detention for over three months before being returned to house arrest. Despite global protests in solidarity her detention was extended by the Myanmar military junta for one year periods in 2007 and 2008. She was finally released in 2010.
Rice was approached by the United States Campaign for Burma, which asked him to donate an existing song for their Free Aung San Suu Kyi 60th Birthday Campaign. Instead Rice constructed, "Unplayed Piano", and also scheduled a live show at the London Palladium to assist in increasing the public profile of the campaign. He also gave a rare interview to The Independent to highlight the issues which inspired the song, discussing his visit to Myanmar and confessing his prior ignorance of the situation there. He wishes not to be viewed as a political activist and is "no Bob Geldof... just a regular guy who has seen something that is wrong and is trying, in some small way, to help".
The Independent described "Unplayed Piano" as "a twinkly and beautiful thing". Rice is known for refusing to openly discuss the song after becoming incensed when a friend commented that it "didn't quite measure up to the clout of his earlier work". He insists that his other songs are more powerful because they originate deeper inside him.
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