Rain on me: Navigating the five stages of pandemic grief through the pop music of 2020
From Dua Lipa to Fiona Apple to Lady Gaga, how music defined my year of mourning normalcy.
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From Dua Lipa to Fiona Apple to Lady Gaga, how music defined my year of mourning normalcy
Posted: Dec 10, 2020 2:00 PM ET | Last Updated: December 10, 2020
Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Charli XCX.(Interscope/Warner/Atlantic)
Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens.
Like pretty much the entire world, I experienced a vicious new kind of grief this past year. Mine was, admittedly, of the relatively privileged variety: over the past nine months of pandemic life, I did not lose my job or apartment, and I thankfully have yet to have anyone close to me become seriously ill from COVID-19. But I did experience an unprecedented loss of normalcy and connection . and, you know, a fear that we were maybe legitima
CREDIT: Bandcamp/Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah
In 1969, folk trio Crosby, Stills & Nash recorded and released a cryptic chestnut entitled “Guinnevere.” The next year, two jazz masters tried their hands at the tune: flautist Herbie Mann emerging with a faithful instrumental cover, and trumpeter Miles Davis reinterpreting it as an intergalactic, unrecognizable epic that neared the 20-minute mark. For the live version appearing on
Axiom, New Orleans bandleader Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah is most interested in Davis’ vision of the song. Electric piano, sitar and a hepcat languor are out in favor of djembe, congas and a hothouse zest. Here, Adjuah who plays trumpet and reverse flugelhorn, among other instruments and his band condense “Guinnevere,” investing it with a pointed verve. The horns veer from woozy to celestial to frenetic, with Corey Fonville’s drums, in particular, elevating this music to new, daring heights. –
Since her first album, 2016’s
Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, Margo Price has often been positioned in outlaw country, flanked by comparisons to Bobbie Gentry and Loretta Lynn. But on her third LP,
That’s How Rumors Get Started, Price veers closer to classic rock and away from the honky-tonk that once echoed through the Nashville songwriter’s music. While her debut was charged with drinking tropes and her sophomore effort (2017’s
All American Made)
steeped in political consciousness,
Rumors focuses on the more vulnerable stories of touring life: being away from home, surviving relationships and the anxiety of stillness. Price is at her most stunning on the gospel-tinged confessional “Prisoner of the Highway,” in which she reflects on the cost of being an artist on the road while in love and starting a family. The same goes for power ballad “I’d Die For You,” where she parallels a soaring Stevie Nicks. A little bit of Nashville and Southern rock seems to ha