How will pop music confront the pandemic?

By M.J.

IN 1930, as America was sinking into an unprecedented economic depression, Harold Arlen and Ted Koelher wrote a jaunty pop song that invited listeners to “forget your troubles”, “get happy” and “chase all your cares away”. In a time of distress, the music offered a moment of reverie. “Get Happy” became one of the biggest hits of the era, and was later covered by stars including Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.

It is a trend that has been repeated during other recessions. Britain in the early 1970s was a drab place. The colourful idealism of the 1960s, with mass activism, psychedelic rock and Harold Wilson’s promises of the “white heat of technology”, had faded to shades of grey. The economy was in decline, with inflation eating into living standards and electricity usage curtailed by high oil prices. Bob Stanley, the author of “Yeah Yeah Yeah”, which chronicles the history of modern pop music, believes that pop responded by looking either forwards—to an imagined future of intergalactic exploration—or backwards, by repurposing the sounds of simpler, safer periods. David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust, a bisexual pop star from light years away. Roxy Music, led by Bryan Ferry, experimented with basic synthesisers, while The Sweet sold records by drawing on the saccharine bubblegum pop of the 1950s.