Our life spent in quarantine over the past year during the pandemic was one of odd parallels and transportive sentiments. We all felt genuinely alone, yet were experiencing lockdown together; we felt a sense of collective boredom, but our minds were constantly occupied. Mondays felt like Thursdays and Fridays felt like Tuesdays, and the indistinguishable days were spent questioning if we really were here at all. As we emerge from a difficult year, there's a pride felt in enduring it all, surviving it, confronting it, and coming out on the other side with slightly less confusion than we had yesterday. All told, survival is success.
For Alu and her new single and video "Alu's Not Dead", the slow end of the pandemic age brings a new sense of reemergence -- but not before capturing the moods and the moans of the past several months, where panic and reassurance danced together effortlessly through the night. Set for release on Thursday, June 24, the Los Angeles songwriter's latest is an enchanting twirl around the moonlit afternoons and sunshine midnights, centered around a playful duality crafted together with Alu's signature brand of theatrical, cinematic storytelling.
"'Alu's Not Dead' is about life in lockdown and ultimately, surviving the seriousness of this pandemic with laughter," Alu says. "Not unlike the nursery rhyme 'Ring Around the Rosie' that children sang during the Great Plague. I find light in dark situations and that is reflected in 'Alu's Not Dead'."
As Alu sings of being still in her body but out of her head, wondering how long she's been trapped in the house, and debating just how far along in the week we were at any given time, she takes us through many of the emotions we've felt over the past 12 to 14 months with a cabaret-style performative grandeur. There's even a tap-dance solo in the middle.
"I started writing 'Alu's Not Dead' at the beginning of the pandemic," she adds. "As everyone knows, it was a crazy, stressful year. I kept getting this cute, playful melody in my head and the words 'I woke up again and I'm not dead.' The song sort of wrote itself in my head over the next few months. I would dance around the house singing it, probably infinitely annoying my boyfriend [and co-producer] Derek Whitacre. He liked the melody and was interested in working on the song with me."
What began as "clunky piano parts" were fleshed out between Alu and Whitacre, building whimsical arrangements around its core, and incorporating a true sense of home life into the track, from her dog's playful barking to hearing laughter from another room. Longtime collaborators Hiro Goto (strings) and Justin DeHart (drums) recorded their parts from their respective home studios, adding a remote component to the track -- another element we've embraced since the start of all this craziness.
The music video for "Alu's Not Dead" furthers the theme, filmed at Alu's home in Los Angeles, and directed by Whitacre and Alu.
"Since we were in lockdown, it seemed natural for us to create a low-key video," Alu says. "No fancy set or crew. Our extra-long hallway and skylights provided a quirky backdrop and we wanted to simply capture life at home. Although lockdown was stressful, I wanted the video to be light and fun. My sweet dog Nomi is the true star of the video and my pandemic hair makes an appearance -- I have yet to get a haircut!"
