In the past few weeks, pandemic playlists have become ubiquitous, with celebrities, government bodies, and news organizations playing DJ. Rita Wilson — one of the first celebrities, along with her husband Tom Hanks, to test positive for COVID-19 — shared a “Quarantunes” playlist with her fans. The Vietnam Ministry of Health produced a coronavirus handwashing song that launched a TikTok dance challenge. There are endless sets devoted to handwashing songs, including Playbill’s collection of Broadway hits (fittingly including I’m Going to Wash That Man Out of My Hair from South Pacific). The CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh suggested washing your hands to songs by local artists like Wiz Khalifa and Christina Aguilera. (Truth be told, “I’m a genie in a bottle, baby/You gotta rub me the right way” would make a genius soap commercial.)..
F— it, mask off!
In the last couple of weeks, in between buying a portable UV light sanitizer and texting my dad about whether viruses can travel through an HVAC unit, I have been at home rapping Future’s 2017 hit Mask Off to myself. The Weeknd’s Can’t Feel My Face and Don’t Stand So Close to Me by the Police are also in constant rotation, all courtesy of a Spotify playlist called “COVID-19 Quarantine Party.” Another current favorite playlist is “Coronavirus Beats to Panic To” (which ironically includes Coldplay’s Don’t Panic). Another one jokes it “could go viral,” and yet another boasts that it has beats “sicker than the coronavirus”…
For many people, these playlists satisfy an intense desire for distraction. In China, after concerts and other large gatherings were cancelled, the musicians of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra created playlists for people at home under quarantine, hoping to help them cope with boredom. As more of the United States was placed under lockdown, DJ D-Nice’s “Club Quarantine” Instagram Live stream fulfilled the same role; The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb praised D-Nice for taking “people’s minds off the invisible peril that surrounds us…”
To read the entire article from Pitchfork, click https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/the-morbid-comforts-of-pandemic-playlists/
