Big stars are hitting social media to help spread good cheer, amidst the coronavirus outbreak.
While smaller singers were the first to react to the coronavirus, now it’s being led by the likes of Bono and Michael Stipe.
The 1987 R.E.M. hit “It’s the end of the world as we know it” has never seemed more appropriate, and the band’s former frontman appeared on a video on his website singing its chorus last week.
Looking like he’d already spent a few days in self-isolation, Stipe sang “I feel fine”.
“I’m bunkering. I’m quarantining. I’m Q.S.Q. — quasi self-quarantined — for several days now and that’s going to continue because I don’t want to go outside,” Stipe said.
“I don’t want to be responsible for getting someone else sick if I’m already sick. I don’t think I am, but none of us knows if we are,” he added.
Bono also got involved writing a song to capture the strangeness of the moment: “Let Your Love Be Known,” is now dedicated to Italy, which is now the worst-hit by the pandemic.
The Irish singer/songwriter filmed himself on his mobile phone, playing the piano in front of bay windows.
“This is a little tune that I made up about an hour ago,” he said, speaking about his first new work in three years.
It’s “for the Italians who inspired it, for the Irish, for anyone who this Saint Patrick’s Day is in a tight spot and still singing,” he wrote on Instagram.
“For the doctors, nurses, carers on the front line, it’s you we’re singing to,” the U2 frontman said.
Canadian singer Coeur de Pirate has also gone viral with a lighter song, which urged fans to not “French kiss your neighbour”. So too has Guadeloupean dancehall reggae star Admiral T, who had a hit online with ‘Coronavirus’.
You can check out some of our favourite songs below.
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