Covid Creations
This EP, as the title suggests, was born of the COVID-19 global pandemic. With an abundance of spare time at home, I found myself writing about what everybody was thinking about, and I also took the opportunity to explore some new genres and styles. On the 18th of March, a day after losing my job due to the pandemic, I wrote It’ll Be Alright in a period of about 20 minutes. I thought it was going to be a sad song – it certainly started out that way, quite literally the first lyrics I wrote being “I’m sad”. But it quickly became about finding hope and light in troubling times, a message which I think is still relevant. It’s the only serious song on the EP, and certainly the most consistent with my other music.
From there I ventured into the world of electronic music. On the 24th of March, I started writing Isolation Sensation, a dance track that really pushed the boundaries of the sort of production I’d ever done before. I finished the song 2 days later, and on the same day, made and uploaded a music video for it which very quickly got over a thousand views on my Facebook page. You can check out the clip on my videos page. This song became a fan favourite, and a bit of a lockdown anthem for some of my friends – I was just happy to bring a smile to people’s faces!
Over late March/early April, the next song I wrote was Lockdown Getdown, a collaboration with my long time friend and house mate, Declan (stage name DJC). This song was really written with the music video in mind, with a story-telling focus on having a COVID-safe boogie at home instead of being able to go out to parties like normal. Declan and I really scaled up the production on our music video, using a smoke machine, laser lights, and several costume changes to absolutely get carried away. I played around with a vocoder to pitch the chorus vocals, and the song is unique in the fact that it really only has one chord the whole way through – it’s an Am11 for those of you playing along at home. I enjoyed building a drop to a beat switch inspired by the switch in Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy, and the absolute anticlimax of what we do in the music video at that point. Comedy gold if you ask me – but I might be biased. You’ll also find that clip here.
After writing those three songs, I realised I could just about make an EP (which requires 4 tracks at minimum) so about 6 weeks later I started writing a fourth song. I came up with Quarantine Daydream because I wanted another rhyming title to really solidify It’ll Be Alright as an outlier on the EP in every possible way. I explored a bit of a blues/funk style with this one, and took the opportunity to include a gratuitous piano solo to try and provide some semblance of real musicianship on the EP. The jury’s still out on whether that worked. So with this song in tow I had myself an EP, and Covid Creations was released everywhere on June 12. I still hope nobody is taking it seriously, and that as the pandemic slowly grows more distant in the rear-view mirror, it continues to bring some joy and entertainment to people.