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to everyone who had a good pandemic
Metadata
- title
- to everyone who had a good pandemic
- meaning
- KŌAN LP closer: quiet without you, podcast as noise, Google life expectancy: boss says just a cold, why'd I laugh along; don't dance and sing about it.
- year
- 2022
- release
- KŌAN
- releaseType
- album
- artist
- Scoobert Doobert
- artistId
- #scoobert
- credits
- Written, performed, and mixed by Luke Francis Walton. Mastered by Riley Knapp. Artwork by Grizzard Graphics.
- spotify
- https://open.spotify.com/album/2wGa9TxP1UvCn1hnfyyV6v
- apple
- https://music.apple.com/us/album/kōan/1618191665
- themes
- The pandemic
- Death
- Capitalism and work
- survivor guilt
- KŌAN
- 2022
- isrc
- QZHN32255318
- isrcSource
- soundexchange
- draft
- false
Lyrics
It's quiet here without you I listen to a podcast To fill the noise You left Behind You left Me so much time I Google my life expectancy How do you expect me To live another 40 years without You hearing How I'm doing I'm not fine To everyone who had a good pandemic I hope that you won't dance and sing about it It's quiet here without you So quiet here without you I need to work To get my mind distracted Everybody's joking now It's just a cold It's over now I laugh and smile They are my boss after all I laughed along Laughed along Laughed along Laughed along I laughed along Laughed along I laughed along Oh why'd I laugh along Laughed along Oh why did I laugh along Laughed along Oh why did I laugh along I laughed along Laughed along Oh why'd I laugh Why'd I ever laugh along? To everyone who had a good pandemic I hope that you won't dance and sing about it To everyone who had a good pandemic I sure hope that you wouldn't brag about it
Content
Track twenty-six on KŌAN, the LP closer, fourth movement only (after Miss Disinformation). Not on the KŌAN A/B/C chapters. Luke solo. The record ends not on an answer but on an address, to the people who thrived while others didn't.
It opens on absence as sound: it's quiet here without you / I listen to a podcast to fill the noise you left behind, grief measured in empty hours, with background audio standing in for a person. Then the search engine as oracle, I Google my life expectancy / how do you expect me to live another 40 years without you hearing how I'm doing. The dead don't get updates.
The title refrain isn't envy: I hope that you won't dance and sing about it, a plea against performative recovery, sharpened on the last pass to I sure hope that you wouldn't brag about it. Around it, return-to-office horror, everybody's joking now / it's just a cold / it's over now, where you laugh because they are my boss after all, same boss energy as a song to quit your job to and No Worries, Yes Worries. The bridge turns that complicity over and over (oh why'd I laugh along), I'm an Idiot's social fake-laugh with a moral hangover after loss.
It closes KŌAN, which opened with Think About It and passed through pandemic-era Boardwalk, on one plain line: some people didn't get a good pandemic. Pairs with Pandemic Blues and A Good Life on Masks and Monsters, and with Miss Disinformation: one lies about facts, one dances over graves.