The coronavirus pandemic has changed how everybody lives their lives. On a day-to-day basis, these changes have been mostly minor: Wear a mask in shared public spaces, wash your hands a little more often, stand a bit farther away from people than you usually would, and so on. There are those, though, who aren’t interested in adapting to life in the pandemic in these non-laborious ways, and among them is legendary 75-year-old Northern Irish musician Van Morrison.
He announced last week that he would be releasing a trio of anti-lockdown singles, and as promised, he delivered the first of them today, “Born To Be Free.” Stylistically, the song is in line with the breezy Van Morrison songs of yesteryear, but lyrically, things are different.
Some choice snippets include, “Don’t need the government cramping my style / Give them an inch, they take a mile,” and, “The new normal is not normal / It’s no kind of normal at all / Everyone seemed to have amnesia just trying to remember the Berlin Wall.”
Morrison previously said of the songs in a statement, “I’m not telling people what to do or think, the government is doing a great job of that already. It’s about freedom of choice. I believe people should have the right to think for themselves.”
Two more songs, “No More Lockdown” and “As I Walked Out,” are set to arrive soon, but in the meantime, check out “Born To Be Free” above.