MOOOVE FURTHER / DON'T SPREAD THE FEVER! (CORONA MONSTER MIX)
Toward the end of last year, I started recording a series of anti-Brexit songs at home with my phone unceremoniously gaffa-taped to the end of the piano. These mostly adapted existing tunes and melodies of all sorts and in some cases mashed up several within the same piece. Some of them used text directly lifted from the excellent Remainiacs podcast, which gave me a little niche fame on Twitter. (Very, very niche, tbh.)
I have intended to give them a page of their own on this website for some while, because they've been a massive part of my musical creativity lately. I'm sure I'll find time soon enough. (Ahem.)
Because they were appreciated by quite a few people, and because they were fun/cathartic to do, I also fully expected to be writing more political ones this year. Not least because the Brexit process hasn’t run its course (surprise!) even though we officially left the EU at the end of January.
And then the past month happened.
For a while I thought: I have to do something musical in response to this crisis. But how do you create an upbeat ’satirical’ song about a virus which is causing so much anxiety and suffering, as well as ruining people’s livelihoods? It’s a tough one to tackle.
But with plenty of time at home to ruminate these past few weeks (!) I finally came up with this medley, using the songs 'Move Closer’ (orig by Phyllis Nelson) and ‘Fever’ (Peggy Lee along with many others), with another well known melody thrown in over the latter for good measure.
It’s both serious and not-serious, and I do hope it makes you smile. Goodness knows we need to find things that will do that right now, for the sake of our mental well-being.