Mac McCaughan, frontman of American Indie outfit Superchunk, has released to the world a festive song laced with dark irony and gallows humour, entitled ‘Happy New Year (Prince Can’t Die Again)’, per NME.
McCaughan shared the song on Bandcamp along with a statement offering some insight into his inspiration for the work (although the title is quite self-explanatory in its own way.) He wrote, ‘written and recorded Dec 24, 2016 in a moment of trying to look at any possible bright side of the coming new year after the disaster that was this one.’ You can check out the results at the link below:
https://macmccaughan.bandcamp.com/track/happy-new-year-prince-cant-die-again
It is a song that both mourns the past and looks forward to the future. 2016 was, of course, a year when many music icons died, including Prince, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen; a sad truth which McCaughan deals with in the first verse of the song. He sings, ‘Oh it was a year when everybody died/ And it was a year where the adults and children cried/ For the loss of their hope/ For the loss of their youth.’ Of course, these deaths were not the only tragedies to befall the world in 2016, at least in the eyes of McCaughan, who in the second verse goes on to focus his eye and ire squarely on the American Presidential election.
The fact that this song was written and recorded on the 24th means that while the chorus’ assertion that ‘Prince Can’t Die Again’ may be literally true, the implication that the future and, especially 2017, can’t possibly be as bad as the past, and 2016, has already been dealt a blow with the loss of George Michael just one day after the song was made.
Although, Superchunk’s last album was 2013’s I Hate Music, they haven’t fallen completely off the radar, and were in the news earlier this year after performing once again with Chuck Garrison. Garrison was the band’s original drummer but hasn’t played with them since 1991. The performance also saw the return of bassist Laura Ballance, who hasn’t toured with the band since 2013 following hearing problems. In addition, McCaughan released his debut solo album, ‘Non-Believers’ in 2015. Whether this new solo track will form the basis of a new solo release is unknown, although back in 2015 when he spoke to Spin Magazine, McCaughan seemed more inclined to return to work with a band than go it alone forever, saying, ‘The idea of a band was always much more appealing to me than solo guy, know what I mean?’ It is clear though that McCaughan is a workaholic, or at least a music-a-holic, telling Spin, ‘I always liked being productive, both from a standpoint of making music [and] I always liked bands that had a lot of records coming out: bands that will have an album come out, and then put out a single that’s not even on the album, then you’re like, “Oh, I’ve gotta go get that!’ So, with two bands and a solo album already behind him, who knows what his next move will be.
