Jagger's 'Eazy Sleazy' succeeds where other pandemic art has failed

Apr. 16—Nothing has made sense for over a year, so it makes perfect sense that Mick Jagger would be the one to give us our first rockin' COVID-19 anthem.

Jagger, who cannot be measured by mere Earth cycles but has nonetheless made 77 trips around the sun, this week released "Eazy Sleazy," a fiery collaboration with Dave Grohl in which he grits his teeth and grouses about a year of quarantine, crazed conspiracies and global depression. It's like your Gen-X older brother teamed up with your Boomer father at an open mic night and laid down a one-take ripper without giving it a second thought.

"We took it on the chin, the numbers were so grim/ bossed around by pricks, stiffen upper lips," a ticked-off Jagger spits over a propulsive riff. "Yeah, pacing in the yard/ trying to take the Mick, you must think I'm really thick!"

He goes on to wax about lockdown annoyances such as canceled tours — the Rolling Stones were due to tour in 2020, including a June date at Ford Field — fake applause at sporting events, viral TikTok dances and Zoom calls. Even the good is laced with bad: "shooting the vaccine, Bill Gates is in my bloodstream," Jagger says, making fun of one of the more ludicrous theories pertaining to the COVID vaccine.

It's funny, it's raw, it's direct. And it works, which is more than can be said for most attempts so far to frame the pandemic in an artistic context.

Like the rest of the world, COVID boxed artists in a difficult place. No one wants to be on a Zoom call, let alone hear about one in a song or watch one on screen. We're all stuck in bad conditions, what else is there to say?

It's one of the reasons January's "Locked Down," starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor, was so dismal. The movie focused on a couple struggling to stay together during the lockdown, with more than a few scenes taking place on virtual Zoom screens. Ben Stiller, Mindy Kaling and Ben Kingsley all make cameos, but their appearances are literally on computer screens. Does that even count?

"Songbird," released in December, fared even worse. The future-set movie told a jumbled story about the lives of a handful of Los Angelenos living through COVID-23, where L.A. has become a militarized zone and any outdoor travel comes with significant risk. There are many reasons the movie failed, but mostly it was due to the fact it was a poorly conceived cash-in on something that was still unfolding. It's tough to comment on something that's still ongoing.

Musicians have had a similarly rough path. Lyrical references to quarantine and social distancing tend to be cringey because of their specificities, and it's hard to make them sound cool. That's why the best musical reaction to the pandemic came courtesy of Taylor Swift, who rather than writing about the global shutdown, wrote about the feeling of isolation it caused, scaling way down and embracing quiet and loneliness on her 2020 one-two punch of "Folklore" and "Evermore." The former earned her Album of the Year honors at last month's Grammy Awards, largely because of the way it spoke to the moment without speaking about the moment.

But here comes "Eazy Sleazy," which unapologetically takes the pandemic head-on. It's anthemic, a fist-pumper, a song which automatically rolls down the windows of your car and makes you go about 10 mph faster. In lesser hands it might be embarrassing — Twenty One Pilots probably couldn't pull it off — but at this point, what's Jagger got to lose?

The best songs take the specific and make them universal. This song doesn't do that. It's about right now, this very moment in time, and it's even written with an optimism that feels a little more last month than this month, now that the vaccine is facing more opposition than anticipated.

But we'll take it. Jagger sounds alive, vital, and practically sneers his lyrics. And he sums up the feeling of the pandemic by saying "it'll be a memory you're trying to remember to forget." It may not be a memory quite as soon as we hoped, but "Eazy Sleazy" will help us remember how it felt.

agraham@detroitnews.com

@grahamorama