A car with a masked driver rolls down the street, windows open, bass thumping, dystopian chorus blasting into the summer air: Do you have the antibodieeees? Do you want to be with me? It’s the new song of this pandemic summer thanks to, uh, the guy who played Cousin Greg in Succession.
Historically, it’s taken time for apocalypses like climate change to become summer bops. But hey, if nothing else, 2020 is moving fast.
The song got its start in May when actor Nicholas Braun (aka Cousin Greg) was quarantining with friends, according to Rolling Stone, where the song premiered today.
“My friends are a couple and they’ve been together for years, but I was back there sort of being like, ‘Man, I wish I had somebody right now to go through this with,’” Braun told Rolling Stone. “And so this girl and I were talking and we were like, ‘Maybe we should go meet up and go for a walk — with bandanas on.’ So I went on this quarantine date; it sort of felt secret because I didn’t want my friends to know. And I guess the combination of paranoia and romance is what the song is about.”
Braun put out a “call to the wild” — Instagram — entreating his musically-inclined followers to help him with a song idea. Apparently, he struck a chord, because boy, did they respond. It got noticed by record label Atlantic Records, and morphed into a professionally produced song and music video, according to Rolling Stone.
The bandanas that inspired the song make an appearance in the music video. So do the Instagram fans. And hand sanitizer. And clips from COVID press conferences. And masks. An escape from our present reality, this is not. But it is surprisingly catchy.
He even manages to work in some of the scientific uncertainty that’s become a feature of the pandemic. After the very problematic line I want to know your blood’s got the stuff/the stuff that makes you clean he clarifies Even though we don’t know what it means/FOR GETTING IT AGAIN.
Sheer poetry. Also, accurate.
Braun’s 81-year-old father had COVID-19 and recovered, according to Rolling Stone. Proceeds from the song will go to nonprofits COPE and Partners in Health.
Mask on, mask on, mask on.
