The Three Songs of Quarantine
None of these songs exist without the 2020 quarantine.
Hold that thought.
Let me come back to that.
Back in my Top 40, I wrote about my love for the television sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. Quick recap: I interned at The Late Show with the two writers that went on to create HIMYM. Knowing them got me to check out the show when it premiered in 2005, the meticulously intentional storytelling got me to stick around for the entire nine season run that ended in 2014.
I wrote this about HIMYM back in 2008 (I still agree with everything I said) but towards the later seasons (six through nine) I grew increasingly frustrated with the series.
Two reasons:
Any episode or story line that wasn’t about meeting the mother was useless and pointless to me.
**MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT**
From watching week in and week out, I knew the show WAS ultimately about Ted and Robin so Ted marching towards another woman always felt off/fake/weird/wrong to me. The show’s own title contradicted what I knew to be true so I was always feeling conflicted and confused.
As we now know, the show’s creators, Carter and Craig, were able to have their cake and eat it too as Ted did indeed finally meet the mother AND the series was indeed ultimately about Ted and Robin.
**END MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT**
I loved the finale and will still defend it to this day. I’ve seen a handful of old episodes here and there over the past seven years that the show has been off the air (SEVEN YEARS??!! How is that possible?) but had never done a full re-watch until this fall.
My fantasy football team was straight dumpster juice this season so I had some extra time on my hands and decided to go back through HIMYM from start to finish.
And a couple bizarre things happened that were in direct contrast to my first time through:
I actually enjoyed episodes that used to bother me. They were fun and funny and ultimately better than anything that tries to pass for comedy in our zipped-lipped culture of today.
I wasn’t concerned with all the twists and red herrings and Zoe’s (!!!) this time around because I knew the ending
And that’s when it hit me.
When I was watching the first time, I missed the joy and experience of the journey because I was so obsessed with the ending.
How often do I do that in my real life as well?
I want to have everything mapped out and figured out and sometimes (or most times) you just can’t. Life is messy and there are twists and red herrings and Zoe’s (!!!). But there are fun and funny episodes in between and I’ve been missing them.
The past few weeks, I’ve had people mentioning that I seem “different.”
I feel different.
Just feeling very macro these days and the micro stuff just isn’t getting to me right now. I feel more peace, I feel more joy, I feel more hope than maybe ever before.
Now - what does any of this have to do with the three songs I posted above? I’m not going to rehash all the details, but we all hated 2020. Agreed? It was legit devastating for a lot of people and has forever changed our society.
We have to start with that baseline awareness because everything else I say after that is truly silver lining bullshit and ultimately meaningless.
BUT.
Even tragedies can produce unexpected fruits.
The three songs I’ve posted here have become all-time already for me and probably land in my Top 40 if I started over today. I’ve legit worn them out over the past year.
I don’t know how Taylor Swift did it, but she made “August” somehow SOUND like being at a beach in the late summer. Growing up in Virginia Beach for most of my life, this song embodies what the week or two before going back to school felt like. I’m not smart enough or articulate enough to describe it better than that. She made a song a feeling. In the same way as Neil Diamond’s September Morn. Taylor was bored during lock-down last year and wrote and produced the “Folklore” album which contains “August.” Without quarantine, she is probably touring or writing other sounding songs and “August” never exists the way we know it today.
Jack Antonoff said he wrote “Chinatown” during quarantine as he was thinking about his hometown of New Jersey. This song gets under my skin in all the best ways possible. The lyrics are absolutely insane:
But a girl like you
Could rip me out of my head
Black tears on your cheek
I want them in my bed
I’ll take you out of the city
Right into the shadow
‘Cause I wanna find tomorrow
Yeah I wanna find tomorrow
With a girl like you
My Chinatown baby
Get out of town with that.
Modern poetry.
Again. Probably never exists without quarantine.
During lock-down, the lead singer of The Killers, Brandon Flowers, started thinking of his hometown as well. We all know The Killers as being “by way of fabulous Las Vegas” but Brandon grew up in small town Utah.
During quarantine he wrote a new concept album, “Pressure Machine” with every song being inspired about where he was from. The title track describes it better than I ever could:
Keep the debt cloud off the kids
Only sunshine on their lids
Jimmy Cricket and Power Wheels
And memories of Happy Meals
Sometimes I look at the stars
I think about how small we are
Sweating it out in the pressure machine
Good 'til the last drop
I can't tell if that's just great imagery on its own or if it resonates so well with me because Brandon and I are the same age. Probably a little of both. And one last time: this song probably never exists without quarantine
I was so angry during 2020. I was so frustrated and annoyed and confused and felt trapped and helpless.
Now I realize that I was just so worried about the ending.
And during all of that frustration, three amazing songs were created that I will now enjoy for the rest of my life. Even in our worst of times, we got three pretty epic tunes.
It would be reckless and irresponsible not to acknowledge that.
I'm just not going to worry about endings right now.
What episode is on today?
I’m going to enjoy that one.
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