Living in a ghost town
Living in a Ghost Town is a song by the British rock band The Rolling Stones . It was released as download and stream on April 23, 2020, as a CD single on May 29, and on vinyl on June 26. In its text, and especially in its official video, it is strongly associated with the global Covid-19 pandemic, which was ongoing at the time, and the exit restrictions associated with it.
It is the first release of the band since a series of cover versions in 2016 and the first self-written song by the musicians since 2012. The song reached number 1 on the iTunes charts in the USA and Germany, among others, and had in the first 48 hours more than 2 million views on Youtube . Although it was only available as a download until then, it entered the official German single charts at number 22 on May 1 and in the same week at number 63 in the British single charts. It also made it into the charts of other countries at the beginning of May. After the song was released on vinyl in several different special editions at the end of June 2020, as well as on CD, the song celebrated its re-entry at number 1 in the German charts, although the streaming numbers were not higher than in previous weeks because of the position in the German charts is purely sales-dependent and does not depend on the number of sales.
The video for the song mostly shows camera pans through deserted cities around the world in time-lapse. Many of the recordings are from London , including quite a few on the London Underground . The text complains of loneliness, boredom and the lack of a beautiful, loud, diverse, stimulating life so far. The line of text “Life was so beautiful, then we all got locked down” is often quoted in the media.
The band had played a very successful tour in the summer months since 2017 with the No Filter Tour in front of around 2.3 million viewers, which was to be extended from May to July 2020 with major concerts in North America. However, these concerts had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. On April 18, 2020, the Rolling Stones were the main act at the Corona charity festival Together at Home .
However, according to the band, the song was created a little more than a year earlier in the studio when recording a new album in Los Angeles, when Covid-19 was still unknown. It was only in the spring of 2020 that the decision was made to release the song as a single at short notice because it suited the current situation. Mick Jagger rewrote part of the lyrics for the publication .
Music critics described the song as a rock or blues rock piece with clear reggae influences and gave it mostly positive reviews.
Web links
- Living in a Ghost Town at Discogs (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Svenja Nowak: The Rolling Stones: "Living In A Ghost Town" appears on vinyl. June 16, 2020, accessed on July 3, 2020 (German).
- ↑ DER SPIEGEL: Rolling Stones number one in the German single charts - for the first time since 1968 - DER SPIEGEL - Kultur. Retrieved July 3, 2020 .