Nearly 16 years after writing and recording “Agoraphobia,” Incubus is bringing new meaning to “I wanna stay inside” with a quarantine-style live video for the song.
The footage from the updated version of the song sees singer Brandon Boyd and guitarist Mike Einziger perform acoustically as black-and-white visuals of Jacques Drouin’s 1975 animation “Mindscape” flash on the screen.
The group originally penned the track in a “post 9/11 world,” Boyd says, and singing it now has the same uncomfortable familiarity.
“I was lamenting reading the daily news feeds and seeing where things were heading and feeling more and more called to just give in to a sense of hopelessness and just stay inside for the rest of my life,” Boyd says of the song. “By the end of the song I wake up to the idea that I indeed don’t want to stay inside for good and there are still pangs of hope and optimism (though cautious) that reside in my heart and my mind. Mike and I recorded this acoustic version a couple of weeks ago while in lockdown because it had an eerily familiar relevance to he and I as this forced (though necessary) collective Agoraphobia was setting in. Herein we aren’t encouraging a fear of the outside world, but merely singing a song that seems to encapsulate the overall mood.”
The 2004-released song, featured on the Billboard No. 2 charting album A Crow Left of the Murder, sees a new mature sound in the “quarantine mix” as the clip ends with unavoidable bold text reading “wash your fucking hands.”
Check out SPIN’s premiere of the video below and read our May interview with the group.
