A Playlist for the End of the World
By: Thomas Smith
Tags: Apocalypse, Playlist, Music, Covid 19, Resilience

A Playlist for the End of the World

Music reflects the apocalyptic feel — and abiding hope — of the COVID-19 pandemic

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

As Covid-19 has continued to spread worldwide — and much of the United States’ population remains under lockdown, many people are turning to music for solace.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, music streaming is up overall. But the kind of music we’re listening to has changed, too. Out are catchy, upbeat pop tunes, and genres like hip hop. In are chiller, moodier songs.

This makes a lot of sense. In the early days of the pandemic, there was a suggestion that streaming services should play happy songs to help people through the crisis and lift their moods. This prompted an immediate backlash, as artists and listeners alike pointed out that listening to happy music in challenging times tends to only make things worse.

People experiencing anything — positive or negative — want to hear music that accurately reflects and builds on their experience.

Right now, Covid-19 can make it feel like we’re facing the end of the world, or an apocalyptic (or at least radically changed) version of it. So I’ve made a playlist to match that collective feeling: a Playlist for the End of the World.

The playlist was originally inspired by R.E.M.’s The End of the World as We Know It. R.E.M. has been my favorite band for a long time, and in many ways this is the quintessential apocalypse song.

It’s also one of those songs that, 1,000 years hence, I could see people analyzing for its hidden, prescient messages--like Nostradamus, but with more grunge influences.

There’s nothing specifically about a pandemic in the song, but there’s plenty of other apocalyptic symbolism to choose from — hurricanes, earthquakes, war. The song also captures the idea of the apocalypse becoming political, which we’ve surely seen with Covid-19.

Next we move to the present (or nearly) with the Decemberists, who are a bit like a modern-day R.E.M. Their Calamity Song — an upbeat pop tune about the end times — is from the King is Dead, which was the band’s attempt to make their own version of R.E.M.’s iconic album Reckoning. R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck evens plays on several of the album’s tracks.

Keeping with the theme of apocalypse-tinged semi-love songs, we go back a bit in time to 1980s one-hit-wonder Nena, and their classic 99 Red Balloons. The song was originally written in German, and captured the attention of American audiences with its frantic pace and synth-backed vocals once it was translated into English in 1984.

The translation also revealed its true meaning — a couple playfully releases red balloons, which are mistaken for an incoming squadron of enemy planes, and prompt a nuclear war. The song was apparently inspired by a concert where the band’s guitarist saw balloons released, realized that they looked like a UFO, and wondered what would happen if a bunch of balloons drifted over the Berlin Wall.

Going back even a little further, we get to Bob Dylan’s Talkin’ World War III Blues. It’s also about nuclear war, and details — through the singer’s dreams — what it would be like to wander around after the apocalypse had arrived.

The protagonist muses about life after war, and wanders through a “lonesome town” that is forever changed by calamity. I found myself involuntarily humming this while walking around the empty streets of San Francisco and documenting them as part of my work as a photographer.

Interestingly, many of the songs on this list reference the apocalypse in the form of a dream. Talkin’ World War III Blues is explicitly about a dream (perhaps, the lyrics suggest, a madman’s dream) about the end times. Calamity Song starts with the lyrics “Had a dream…”. And parts of It’s the End of the World as we Know It, including the iconically weird line “Birthday Party! Cheesecake! Jelly bean! Boom!” were inspired by Michael Stipe’s dream about a post-apocalyptic birthday party.

Before, the end times were only accessible as part of a dream, or a departure from reality. Now, the reality feels more and more present for us.

Next up is CCR’s iconic Bad Moon Rising. The song has plenty of references to specific elements of the apocalypse, including hurricanes, floods and the like.

But the spookiest part is the non-specific idea of a “bad moon”. It captures the feeling of something creepy and poorly understood waiting outside your home to “take your life”. Covid-19 has a similar all-present, barely-understood, creepy feel. And the line “Don’t go around tonight” captures the feeling of staying locked down to avoid this poorly understood threat.

The Clash’s London Calling is another great apocalypse song that many people don’t realize is about the end times. It blends elements of World War 2 imagery of sheltering underground to avoid the blitz with the concept of a new (presumably nuclear) war.

The title likely refers to the BBC World Service’s “London Calling” radio program, and captures the idea of humanity making a list-ditch communication (in this care, to the underworld, which references either hell, or people locked down underground) in the face of a catastrophic event.

Towards the end of the playlist, we take a more positive turn with Bob Dylan’s Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall, another song about nuclear war. Many songs on the list assume the end times will come in the form of nuclear annihilation. This likely reflects the climate in which they were written — when this felt like the primary threat, rather than the slow burn of contagion. Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

I know it sounds strange to say that a song with lyrics like “I walked ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard” has a positive message. But the ultimate conclusion of the song is that the end times have not yet come — they are avoidable, through collective action and resistance. The protagonist concludes by saying:

I’m a-going back out ’fore the rain starts a-falling…

And I’ll tell it, and speak it, and think it, and breathe it

And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it

Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking

But I’ll know my song well before I start singing

This is a message of resilience, and defiance. The apocalypse is imminent, but the protagonist doesn’t give in to the end times. They resolve to do whatever they can, for as long as they can, to resist it — to “stand on the water until I start sinking”. There’s also a concept of collective, organized resistance, with the idea of knowing your song well before you start singing — to have a plan, and to move forward together in a coordinated way.

This captures the hope inherent in crisis. By banding together and collectively resisting the end times, we can prevent them from coming to pass. With Covid-19, I see this every day in the collective action of staying at home, the heroism of front-line workers and the medical/scientific community, and the resolve of volunteers who help their neighbors, shield the most vulnerable in our community, and help those around them through the pandemic.

This is ultimately a very positive message. And the song also captures a swing from the darkest imagery (“I met a young child/Beside a dead pony”) to a message of positivity, defiance, resolve and resilience. By banding together and never stopping the fight, we can make it through this impossible time together.

Finally, the playlist concludes with the Decemberists’ simple, rousing ballad Sons & Daughters. The song captures the joy of a community leaving lockdown, moving beyond an apocalyptic present, and rebuilding their lives on a new, promising shore.

Filling their mouths with cinnamon (to ward off nuclear fallout) and standing arms to shoulders, they disembark into a changed world that they resolve to make, once again, familiar and hopeful — to make home. Even the title Sons & Daughters suggests moving beyond an apocalyptic present, and making a better world for our children and those that come after us.

It’s a powerful message of hope for a better future, in the darkest of times. As we navigate a present that can feel radically changed and often apocalyptic, I hope that we too can band together, and move forward towards a better, brighter future.