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Apr 02, 2020 By Andy Von Pip COVID-19 Quarantine Playlists

As most of us are understandably stuck inside for the foreseeable future due to the necessary COVID-19 quarantine, we’ve asked our writers to put together Spotify playlists to help us all pass the time. Some will be mixes of music they are currently listening to as a means of getting them through the crisis, others will be centered on a particular theme, scene, genre, or decade. With each one we’ve asked the writer to also submit a photo showing some aspect of their quarantine life, be it their home office desk, hanging with their kids who are off school, or something else. Here is a COVID-19 quarantine playlist from our writer Andy Von Pip, who is based in Liverpool, England.

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As the reality sinks in and we try and adjust to the new normal, it’s apparent that COVID-19 is a game-changer for us all. Like many involved in and around the music and creative scene I’ve been a freelancer for years, and alongside many musicians, venues, sound techs, and those working in hospitality have found income sources vanish overnight. In the UK there has been a sense of the government working in slow motion and if Italy and Spain are indicators of what’s to come, life won’t be returning anything resembling normal anytime soon. My wife is also a nurse for the NHS working on the frontline, sadly the NHS’s capacity to cope with coronavirus has been considerably compromised due to 10 years of ideological austerity leading to the chronic underfunding of our health service and failure to address staffing problems. By all accounts, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

It’s important to try and keep things as normal as we can, but we really do have to make substantial changes to the way we live our lives, this virus is not “just like the flu” and that we must follow all guidelines. Click here for the current advice in the UK.

I’ve put together this playlist together with no particular theme, in the main it’s new music that hopefully excites, consoles, inspires. I wanted the music to be generally uplifting, not too dystopian and on the whole hopeful, hence starting with “Hope” by Cable Ties. “Won’t Back Down” By THICK is another track that feels like an appeal for unity and solidarity whilst being imbued with a real fighting spirit.

Elsewhere you’ve got tracks from emerging Under the Radar favorites from the UK Sorry and Porridge Radio who have unleashed brilliant debut albums this year. And of course, the welcome return to the music of the majestic I Break Horses

Hopefully, readers will find the playlist a welcome distraction and may discover a number of artists you’d like to find out more about, and then, finances permitting, support them by buying some merch or sharing their music. And when this is all over you might even get to see them play live. Fingers crossed.

We may be social distancing but it’s never been more important that we support and look after each other and the vulnerable, these are unprecedented times and something that none of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Enjoy the music and stay safe.

Follow Andy on Twitter at @VonPip.

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