- Invitation Status
- Look for groups
When it comes to music, I'm typically a year or two behind, so much of the music that got me through the COVID era weren't actually made in that particular context: I'm hoping for more recommendations in the replies below.
A lot of the music that got me through the pandemic (not that it's really over, but let's set that sad fact aside for now) came from before it, both shortly before -- I really dug Fetch the Bolt Cutters and RTJ4 the year they came out, but they were obviously produced before this disease went as mainstream as them -- and long before, but one of my favourite albums of this brief yet nevertheless momentous era, Queen Bey's Renaissance, was 100% a COVID album ("Worldwide hoodie with the mask outside / in case you forgot how we act outside"), and there's a couple of live albums I really enjoyed where their artists just straight-up recorded their Zoom calls. Hamell on Trial's The Pandemic Songs, especially the track where he questions why a kid is allowed to watch one of his very adult concerts, is something of a delight, but even more so I've found is Low Cut Connie's Tough Cookies: The Best of the Quarantine Broadcasts, where the musicians had the advantage of primarily dealing in covers: one can't help but love how that album puts on equal footing Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" and Cardi B's "Be Careful".
But there is one album, released 2016, that I found especially relevant, all those years of staying at home. Blind Willie Johnson was a gospel blues singer who toured the United States from at least the late 1920s to around the 1940s, although much of his material definitely came from before that. In some cases, not too long before, with the song "God Don't Never Change" having this rather disturbing verse:
A lot of the music that got me through the pandemic (not that it's really over, but let's set that sad fact aside for now) came from before it, both shortly before -- I really dug Fetch the Bolt Cutters and RTJ4 the year they came out, but they were obviously produced before this disease went as mainstream as them -- and long before, but one of my favourite albums of this brief yet nevertheless momentous era, Queen Bey's Renaissance, was 100% a COVID album ("Worldwide hoodie with the mask outside / in case you forgot how we act outside"), and there's a couple of live albums I really enjoyed where their artists just straight-up recorded their Zoom calls. Hamell on Trial's The Pandemic Songs, especially the track where he questions why a kid is allowed to watch one of his very adult concerts, is something of a delight, but even more so I've found is Low Cut Connie's Tough Cookies: The Best of the Quarantine Broadcasts, where the musicians had the advantage of primarily dealing in covers: one can't help but love how that album puts on equal footing Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" and Cardi B's "Be Careful".
But there is one album, released 2016, that I found especially relevant, all those years of staying at home. Blind Willie Johnson was a gospel blues singer who toured the United States from at least the late 1920s to around the 1940s, although much of his material definitely came from before that. In some cases, not too long before, with the song "God Don't Never Change" having this rather disturbing verse:
"The influenza" refers to the pandemic of 1918, and the album is God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson, featuring covers by Lucinda Williams, Sinead O'Connor, and so on. But, as I opened, I look forward to y'all's recommendations below!