(May 23, 2020) North London native Sinéad Harnett has been getting her musical hustle on for the better part of a decade. After many promising starts and stops, she achieved a new level of artistic flow with her 2019 full-length debut, Lessons in Love. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has opened up a whole new level of emotional reflection and creative exploration for the singer-songwriter-keyboardist.
On the cleverly titled “Quarantine Queen,” Harnett examines a number of the questions and fears that have surfaced in her conscience since the start of stay-at-home orders coinciding with the spread of the coronavirus. Of the track (which she composed, recorded, and filmed the video for at home during the days since), she says: “When the world got turned upside down and we went into lockdown, life as we knew it changed catastrophically. Though there are good sides to this, i.e., the slower pace, appreciating the simple things and being able to relax, the chilling question that weighs on my heart is, ‘Am I gonna die alone?’ That worrying emotion is what brought about ‘Quarantine Queen.’”
The sparse instrumental arrangement, combined with Harnett’s clear and vulnerable vocal, drive the song’s point home poignantly: “Are we all just pretending that the world isn’t ending?/I’m afraid that I ain’t done enough/And if we go up above, I never learnt how to love…We ain’t living this right/There was only so far we could go.”
Check out the video for “Quarantine Queen” below and leave your thoughts on Sinead’s musical response to this unprecedented crisis that we’re all facing.
Sinéad Harnett – “Quarantine Queen”
