“Tonight I’m good staying inside/ But I’ll be dancing for sure,” he sings.
Sometimes you write a song that perfectly captures the mood of the day and sometimes the day catches up to your song in ways you couldn’t have predicted. Declan McKenna could never have imagined back in January that the jaunty pop tune he described to the NME as “a brave new anthem for doomed youth… about young people in the modern world and how intimidating it can be,” the bouncy “Beautiful Faces,” would end up being the perfect, if ironic, anthem for our first-ever self-quarantine St. Patrick’s Day (March 17).
The song, which hit a peak at No. 29 on the Alternative Songs chart this week, features the poignant second verse, “Tonight I wanna be on Broadway and in cabaret/ Tonight I must go out and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.” With the United States on virtual lockdown due to the fast-spreading COVID-19 novel coronavirus — which has muted, or completely eliminated the typically raucous St. Paddy’s Day party traditions — McKenna’s ode to the beauty of young people hitting bars to forget how frightening the world can be is unintentionally spot-on.
Especially when you get to the stay-at-home, but also stock up third verse, where he sings, “Tonight I’m good staying inside/ But I’ll be dancing for sure/ Going to the stores, pulling socks out of the drawers/ Of the people who you don’t love anymore.” Some clever Twitter users picked up on the irony of the song’s lyrics on Tuesday, with one writing, “Haha jokes on your declan, tonight you won’t go out and celebrate st. patricks day, corona won’t let you.”
McKenna answered with a frowny face emoji.
Watch the “Beautiful Faces” video below.