Published: 28 April 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTeZcHWHeW4[/embed]
THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has been a strange experience for everyone but for Australian musician Ben Lee, who wrote We’re All In This Together, it’s been just that little bit weirder.
The 2005 hit has become an unofficial global anthem for our collective response to the coronavirus, quoted repeatedly around the world over the past month by everyone from world leaders to medical experts, mums and dads.
Now living in Los Angeles with his family, the Sydney-born Jewish musician is self-effacing about the song’s current relevance. Back then, he felt it had a sombre, understated vibe that would be a slow burner, he told The Jewish Independent in an exclusive interview.
“As a songwriter, you never know when your work will be useful. Obviously, no one owns ideas, they are communal and belong to everyone at a cosmic level. It seems like an appropriate idea for this current moment.”
Lee admits it’s been hard to avoid thinking about it. “I’m getting lots of messages about people finding my music comforting, or helpful right now. I feel grateful for that. It feels good to have made music that feels reassuring for people,” he says of the song, which was released on his album Awake Is The New Sleep.
As a songwriter, you never know when your work will be useful. Obviously, no one owns ideas, they are communal and belong to everyone at a cosmic level. It seems like an appropriate idea for this current moment.
While most messages have been of support and thanks, Lee says “the phone has been ringing a bit” with requests to repurpose the song. Would he consider it? “I don’t like to make too many outright rules. You never know what kind of request is going to come in. But the song is doing its thing right now.”
Lee has been doing his thing, too, having performed in an online Anzac Day concert over the weekend from Los Angeles, where he and his family have been quarantined at home for five weeks. “My daughter and stepdaughter are both at school online,” he says. “The dogs seem happy having us around all the time.”
But he is keenly aware of how some are doing it tougher than others, especially in a city of extremes like Los Angeles. “The pandemic has highlighted the gap between those who can afford to isolate and quarantine fully and those who are forced to work through this experience out in the world.
“I heard a construction worker say recently, ‘coronavirus is a rich person’s problem’, which I thought was very interesting. Obviously, it’s not literally true, but he was expressing the lack of options he felt in regard to his response. It is a challenging time for everyone.”
Lee has also been reminded of a more personal, musical twist unleashed by the virus: a fresh spotlight on another of his songs from Awake Is The New Sleep. The breakout single from that album was Catch My Disease, whose catchy title now has a strange second life.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIWgvL7tLfI[/embed]
“The disease that song is talking about is joy,” he points out, in case anyone gets the wrong ideas. “An awareness of interconnectedness. In that sense it is relevant, I guess.”
Has he copped any ribbing about the unintended irony of the two songs? “Only from people on Twitter who seem to think they are each the first person to notice or make a joke.”
Lee says that at the time he wrote the songs, “I always thought ‘Catch’ was a pretty perfect weird hit pop song. And it was. And We're All In This Together felt like a sleeper, a bit deeper and sad. And that song has indeed taken some time to find its full expression or use.
“Man, being a songwriter is weird.”
WATCH THE VIDEO OF BOTH SONGS
We’re All In This Together
Catch My Disease
