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You Know What, Fine: Taylor Swift Covers Earth, Wind & Fire's 'September'

Great, whatever, knock yourselves out.
Courtesy of the artist
Great, whatever, knock yourselves out.

A quick scan of the headlines reveals, for those who'd let it slip their minds, that the world is essentially an exploding toilet of governmental crisis and global conflict. A quick scan of tomorrow's headlines will likely reveal, for those who dare anticipate them, an entirely new set of threats and catastrophes. The old ones won't have resolved themselves, mind you; they'll merely have been joined by a fresh set of nauseating calamities, each landing in our lives with the shudder-inducing plop of a full diaper dropped off a tall building.

Against the backdrop of this harrowing nightmare-world, Taylor Swift has decided to record a lightly countrified cover of Earth, Wind & Fire's "September" for the Spotify Singles series. To which I say: Sure! Knock yourself out! It's not like it's going to be the worst thing that happens today, right? It already feels like we're living inside a haunted circus — a ceaseless parade of demented calliope music and blood-spattered clowns, each emitting a piercing, unbroken shriek that lasts until infinity — so let's all just go limp and check it out.

There. Look what you made me do.

Postscript : For those who believe in stuff like "silver linings" and "mitigating circumstances" and "the potential for good in the world," here's The Temptations' cover of The Weeknd's 2014 song "Earned It."

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)