"Love Song in 2020" by James Barrett
James Barrett new single “Love Song in 2020” is the second single from his as yet untitled second album. But Barrett says he felt it necessary to release the song now. “I felt like this was the song I wanted to get out,” Barrett said. “I felt like now is the good time.”
The song sees Barrett grappling with how to deal with personal tragedy that takes place against the backdrop of a world in chaos. “I wrote it in the beginning of the year,” Barrett said in a phone interview last week. “It’s about trying to find forgiveness at the end of the world. It deals with a relationship not working out and the world falling apart and trying to find something positive.”
“I’m so scared of hospitals and ICUs/ and an abundance of constant bad news on the networks,” Barrett sings, with emotion clear in his voice, before coupling the pandemic with the personal tragedy in the next lines. “Now I’m scared that you will get sick, too./ In the event you do, I love you, and I’ll forgive you,/ for the hell you forced me through.”
“I kinda feel like everybody has personal stuff going on, on top of everything going on in the world,” he said over the phone. “When there’s no hope elsewhere, you’re like, ‘Oh my God …’ It’s a frightening feeling.”
James Barrett Bio
James Barrett has released a handful of EPs under his own name, each chronicling a different chapter of growing up and gaining clarity in his native Scranton. The Price of Comfort soft reboots his whole approach—while the ringing clarity of his voice is the constant, the elements around him have gained teeth and tenacity. As his first LP, Comfort also debuts Barrett’s full-band sound, a choice that mirrors the record’s tumultuous two-year development. Many of these songs, like the sweeping closer “Everything Will Be Beautiful in the End” or the thorny midpoint “On Comfort,” catalog a mourning period. (Others, like the six-minute dirge “The World Back Then” began forming when James was seventeen.) Yet, The Price of Comfort is warmer and more welcome than its darkness suggests, with each track exploding and unfolding to expose some needed light. It’s in the uplifting delivery and the varied genre play of James Barrett’s plussed-up alt-rock that give The Price of Comfort a priceless sense of hope. Seamless transitions serve as quiet reminders of the irrelevance of time when loss takes center stage (including the contemplation afforded with an interlude like “Subsides”), but each track is focused on moving past the impossible weight of grieving. Barrett’s coping mechanisms weave between acid-tongue pop punk (“Do It Better”) and bouncy acoustic rock that hearkens back to his roots (“A Place Devoted”), each mutation more measured than the last.
