It has tak­en a viral pan­dem­ic, and a moun­tain of trag­ic fol­ly and more to come, but the inter­net has final­ly deliv­ered the qual­i­ty con­tent we deserve, at least when it comes to celebri­ties stuck at home. Night­ly bed­time sto­ries read by Dol­ly Par­ton? Inti­mate streamed per­for­mances from Neil Young, Ben Gib­bard, and many, many oth­ers, includ­ing stars of Broad­way and opera house stages? It can feel a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple work­ing, edu­cat­ing, and doing a hun­dred oth­er things in quar­an­tine. But if there’s some­one I real­ly want to hear from, it’s the guy who told us, thir­ty-some years ago, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

If you remem­ber the Rea­gan years, you remem­ber liv­ing under the threat of mass extinc­tion by nuclear win­ter and radi­a­tion poi­son­ing. The end of the world seemed immi­nent at the end of the Cold War. And Michael Stipe, in a man­i­cal­ly dance­able tune (depend­ing on your lev­el of sta­mi­na), pro­claimed a need for soli­tude after issu­ing his many griev­ances.

It is still the end of the world, he says in a recent video address about coro­n­avirus on his web­site (and a short­er ver­sion released on social media), and “I do feel fine. I feel okay. The impor­tant part of that lyric, that song title, is ‘As We Know It.’ We’re about to go through—we are going through some­thing that none of us have ever encoun­tered before….”

The moment is unique, of world­wide his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance as was the bel­liger­ent arms race of the late eight­ies, the ter­ri­ble A.I.D.S. epi­dem­ic, and oth­er cat­a­stroph­ic events occur­ring when R.E.M.  released Doc­u­ment, the 1987 album that intro­duced mil­lions of young fans to art-punk genius­es Wire—whose “Strange” Stipe and com­pa­ny cov­er; to blues­man Light­nin’ Hop­kins and red-bait­ing sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy, who lent their names to two songs; and to Lenny Bruce, pio­neer­ing 60s com­ic, who, like Stipe in the album’s Side One clos­er, is “not afraid” of earth­quakes, birds and snakes, aero­planes, and oth­er signs of the apoc­a­lypse. Things will change irrev­o­ca­bly, and life will prob­a­bly go on. In the mean­time, he says, “don’t mis-serve your own needs.”

You may not be sur­prised to learn the song re-entered the charts on March 13, 2020, as Poly­phon­ic informs us in their video at the top. “It’s easy to see why.” These days nuclear holo­caust seems low on the list of prob­a­ble caus­es for the world’s end, what with poten­tial eco­nom­ic col­lapse and more mas­sive cli­mate events fol­low­ing on COVID-19’s heels. Grim times indeed, as we know them, but they’re hard­ly the first we’ve faced in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Behind Stipe’s “glib irony” in “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” lies a fierce cri­tique of U.S. greed and vio­lence and, as always, an alter­na­tive ethos, one whose call we might espe­cial­ly heed in our days of iso­la­tion.

We’re eager to recon­nect in myr­i­ad ways, but time alone might not be such a bad idea. “Return, lis­ten to your­self churn,” Stipe sings, “lis­ten to your heart beat.” We can hear the final call for soli­tude as a dig at rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism, or a call to healthy intro­spec­tion. As the orig­i­nal video sug­gests, wad­ing through the clut­ter might help us reclaim the stuff that makes us our best selves. Along with issu­ing his PSA, Stipe has also released a video, above, of a new demo track, “No Time for Love Like Now.” Here, he ditch­es the arch­ness and anger of his fiery younger self for a plain­tive state­ment about what the world needs. You guessed it…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emo­tion­al­ly-Charged Songs: “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Rob­bie Robertson’s “The Weight,” the Band’s most beloved song, has the qual­i­ty of Dylan’s impres­sion­is­tic nar­ra­tives. Ellip­ti­cal vignettes that seem to make very lit­tle sense at first lis­ten, with a cho­rus that cuts right to the heart of the human predica­ment. “Robert­son admits in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy,” notes Patrick Doyle at Rolling Stone, “that he strug­gled to artic­u­late to pro­duc­er John Simon what the song was even about.” An artist needn’t under­stand a cre­ation for it to res­onate with lis­ten­ers.

A read of the “The Weight”’s lyrics make its poignant themes evident—each stan­za intro­duces char­ac­ters who illus­trate some sor­row or small kind­ness. The cho­rus offers what so many peo­ple seem to crave these days: a promise of rest from cease­less toil, free­dom from con­stant trans­ac­tions, a com­mu­ni­ty that shoul­ders everyone’s bur­dens…. “It’s almost like it’s good med­i­cine,” Robert­son told Doyle, “and it’s so suit­able right now.” He refers specif­i­cal­ly to the song’s revival in a dom­i­nant musi­cal form of our iso­la­tion days—the online sing-along.

Though its lyrics aren’t near­ly as easy to remem­ber as, say, “Lean on Me,” Robertson’s clas­sic, espe­cial­ly the big har­monies of its cho­rus (which every­one knows by heart), is ide­al for big ensem­bles like the globe-span­ning col­lec­tion assem­bled by Play­ing for Change, “a group ded­i­cat­ed to ‘open­ing up how peo­ple see the world through the lens of music and art.” The group’s pro­duc­ers, Doyle writes, “recent­ly spent two years film­ing artists around the world, from Japan to Bahrain to Los Ange­les, per­form­ing the song,” with Ringo Starr on drums and Robert­son on rhythm gui­tar. They began on the 50th anniver­sary of the song’s release.

The per­for­mances they cap­tured are flaw­less, and mixed togeth­er seam­less­ly. If you want to know how this was achieved, watch the short behind the scenes video above with pro­duc­er Sebas­t­ian Robert­son, who hap­pens to be Rob­bie’s son. He starts by prais­ing the stel­lar con­tri­bu­tions of Larkin Poe, two sis­ters whose root­sy coun­try rock updates the All­man Broth­ers for the 21st cen­tu­ry. But there are no slouch­es in the bunch (don’t be inti­mat­ed out of your own group sing-alongs by the tal­ent on dis­play here). The song res­onates in a way that con­nects, as “The Weight”’s cho­rus con­nects its non-sequitur stan­zas, many dis­parate sto­ries and voic­es.

Robert­son was thrilled with the final prod­uct. “There’s a guy on a sitar!” he enthus­es. “There’s a guy play­ing an oud, one of my favorite instru­ments.” The song sug­gests there’s “some­thing spir­i­tu­al, mag­i­cal, unsus­pect­ing” that can come from times of dark­ness, and that we’d all feel a whole lot bet­ter if we learned to take care of each oth­er. The Play­ing for Change ver­sion “screams of uni­ty,” he says, “and I hope it spreads.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream Marc Maron’s Excel­lent, Long Inter­view with The Band’s Rob­bie Robert­son

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Austin City Limits–an PBS music pro­gram record­ed live in Austin, Texas–has decid­ed to open its archives “as a gift to music fans dur­ing the cur­rent live music mora­to­ri­um.” They write: “Start­ing March 23, the peren­ni­al tele­vi­sion series will make fan-favorite episodes from the recent­ly broad­cast Sea­son 45 avail­able for stream­ing, in addi­tion to the entire slate of pro­grams from the pre­vi­ous two sea­sons of the acclaimed con­cert show­case. Over 35 ACL install­ments will be avail­able to stream free online at https://www.pbs.org/show/austin-city-limits/ offer­ing a wide vari­ety of music’s finest from every genre. here’s some­thing for every­one: an elec­tri­fy­ing hour with gui­tar hero Gary Clark Jr.; an epic stage jour­ney with 2020’s Gram­my-win­ning glob­al pop phe­nom Bil­lie Eil­ish; super­group The Racon­teurs, fea­tur­ing Jack White and Bren­dan Ben­son, in an all-out hour of pure rock and roll.”

Get more infor­ma­tion here, and stream episodes here.

Above you can watch Robert Plant on Austin City Lim­its dur­ing a show record­ed in 2016.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

The Met Opera Stream­ing Free Operas Online to Get You Through COVID-19

Bruce Spring­steen Releas­es Live Con­cert Film Online: Watch “Lon­don Call­ing: Live In Hyde Park” and Prac­tice Self Dis­tanc­ing