Since I produce artists and facilitate songwriting and production workshops and classes, almost every week (often every day) I hear a lot of new songs. And of course lately many of those songs are concerned with or refer to the Covid-19 virus.

More than the virus itself, the songs deal with its emotional and financial consequences – quarantine, aloneness, loneliness, strange dreams, lack of work, lack of money, anxiety, depression… things like that.

When we look back, many of these songs will be counted as ‘topical’ songs. Songs that are about, directly or indirectly, what’s happening at the moment they’re written.

To some extent, most good songs are topical songs. People want to hear music that reflects their lives at the moment. Sometimes we find that connection in songs from other eras, but often only Now will do.

But truly topical songs don’t usually have a long shelf life. Who wants to hear a song today that was written at the time of and about Watergate? Or the Korean War? It would have to be a pretty good song!

Some topical songs do outlive their moment. A song from America’s great Depression of the 1930s, ‘Brother Can You Spare A Dime’ comes to mind. Even though a dime won’t buy you much today, the song is still heart-rending. Also Woody Guthrie’s songs are a great model. Very political, very specific and detailed, and very of their moment. Yet many of them still feel alive today. Woody’s songs deal with dilemmas that come up in every generation. The names change; human nature doesn’t.

There’s no formula to make a topical song live past its moment, other than it needs to be a great song (and telling you that is no help at all). But I can tell you one thing that will pretty much guarantee that your pandemic song won’t outlive its moment.

I’d summarize it as this: ‘Don’t let the pandemic do your work for you’. To resonate with an audience reeling from a worldwide experience of fear, death, lockdown, and isolation, a song written now doesn’t have to do much. But when this pandemic ends (and it will, eventually), you won’t have the immediacy of that common well to draw from. It’ll be history, a memory, which is a very different proposition.

So a song that tries to capture this moment has to do the work of really capturing this moment. Don’t think that since everyone knows what the song’s about, you don’t really have to bring the experience to vivid life, as Woody did. You still do.

It may not matter much to your listeners right now, but in a year or two, and beyond, it will.

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