Jensen McRae has released “Immune,” a full version of the Phoebe Bridgers parody song that went viral.
A couple weeks ago I had this idea about the idea of the vaccination anthem. This pandemic has colored pop culture permanently, whether we like it or not. On the way to us, almost inevitably, are pandemic romcoms and pandemic novels and, in my case, pandemic songs. This song came about partly as a joke, a parody of one of my favorite songwriters of all time, Phoebe Bridgers, who specializes in dark, spare, precise lyrics about Our Unprecedented Times. My prediction about how Bridgers would tackle love in the time of vaccination—and an accompanying clip of the hypothetical song—took off on Twitter, so me and my producer, Rahki, decided to finish the song and turn it into something that sounds like me. It’s about how the emotional stakes of our relationships have been ratcheted up in light of global calamity, about hipsters and science and dogs and love. Enjoy.
Jensen McRae