Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the lives of musicians in so many different ways, including the Basque Country. Beginning with the lockdown in March 2020, it is not only that they postponed or cancelled tours and releases, but that the emergency situation had an impact on their compositions and creations. This work explains how the pandemic is told in pop songs, using a critical discourse analysis method based on coding. The objective of this research was to understand how the pandemic is reflected on Basque pop songs. Therefore, the lyrics of songs composed from the lockdown on and released between April 2020 and May 2021 that have sounded on the public radio Gaztea (N= 74) have been analyzed. COVID-19 is not explicitly mentioned in none of them; nevertheless, feelings, topics, and values related to the collective experience are covered. For instance, “lockdown” or “ERTE” (an economic measure in Spain) are mentioned, as well as feelings that belong to the experience societies are living worldwide, such as uncertainty, loneliness, or desperation. Lots of songs are related, in a matter of fact, to the loneliness lived at home with sentences as “when will I be able to go out”.