Love in the time of coronavirus
AN ASPIRING SONGWRITER RELEASES MUSIC ON LOVE, LOSS WHILE GRAPPLING WITH THE VALUE OF ART IN THESE TIMES
It was supposed to be a celebration, the culmination of nearly a year’s work.
The songs Zoe Clark began writing in summer 2019 were recorded in the fall and mixed during the winter. In February, she released her first single “Cave,” to some fanfare. The track received radio play and she performed it regularly on Nashville’s bar circuit, where she was finishing her final semester at Belmont University. The 21-year-old Greenwich native’s debut country-pop EP, “Lovers Mark,” was set for an April 17 release. Clark had a new record on the horizon and momentum.
And then came the pandemic.
Clark, who in late March was preparing to release her second single, faced a difficult decision with which, amid the outbreak of the COVID-19, many musicians, both established and ascendant, have had to grapple.
Should she defer the release, like so many others artists had chosen to do, or drop the EP as planned? What role did her songs he play in an unprecedented public health crisis?
“That was something I was really contemplating,” Clark said recently, from her childhood home in Greenwich, where she’s stayed since Nashville shut down in mid-March. “Do I release music, do I not? There are so many people who are like, ‘we’re going to wait.’ ”
The music industry has been hard-hit by the pandemic. Major artists, like Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga and Haim, have postponed releases. Tours and live shows have been uniformly canceled and uncertainty prevails for both major acts and those, like Clark, trying to make their way in what can be a cutthroat
competitive world.
But Clark opted to forge ahead and release the album as scheduled, citing, in part, a feeling she had that especially now, people needed new music.
It was a bittersweet moment for Clark, who canceled the release party that would’ve been held at a downtown Nashville bar. Instead, the King School graduate, who’d started playing music and writing songs at age 12, found herself back at her parents’ Connecticut home as the album released.
“It’s so weird going back to my childhood bedroom,” Clark said. “When I was in high school, I would write songs on my bed. I feel like I’m in a time machine and I’m taken back to that place. It’s so weird.”
Among other adjustments, the scenery change brought with it a vastly different creative experience than Clark had become accustomed to in Nashville, where she regularly participated in co-writes and performed with other musicians.
Now, she meets with other artists only via Zoom. Concert dates scheduled for the summer, in the southeast, and fall, in New England, are presumably canceled, though she hopes to play one-offs as states reopen.
It was a difficult blow to be dealt to an artist early in her career. But Clark seems undeterred.
In addition to radio play, she’s been profiled in several Nashville magazines. Her music is featured on a multitude of Spotify playlists and the album’s lead single, “Cave,” has gotten nearly 20,000 plays.
And Clark plans to record new music. She’s awaiting a return to Nashville and a studio. Her goal is to release new singles by the fall and expand Lovers Mark into a fulllength LP.
In terms of her songwriting, she’s begun exploring new subjects, partly out of necessity and partly as she matures artistically. Walks around her neighborhood and movies she’s watching at home provide fodder for new material.
Her latest music is more danceable than those on Lovers Mark, which is a collection of pop songs with a slight twang — she cites Taylor Swift as among her biggest influences — each of which is a reflection on her personal experiences in and out of love.
“I wanted it to be this cohesive piece that represented love and lust and heartache,” Clark said. “I wanted it to be about that person, or those people, who have left a mark on you.”
The irony is not lost on Clark. Love in the time of coronavirus looks and feels different than it did a year ago, when she wrote the songs.
But, paradoxically, Clark wonand ders if her songs — about lovers spurned, missed connections and budding romance — might especially resonate during a profoundly lonely time.
“I get texts from my friends about my songs,” Clark said. “They’ll be like, ‘I just listened to “Terminal 4” like 10 times this morning because I needed to hear it right now . ... ‘I feel like now more than ever people want that. They want those songs during this time.”