Phillip Smith
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Sean Michael Dargan on the quad at Stanford University.
COVID-19 is taking its toll, and everyone has had to find ways to deal with the pandemic. For Madison musician Sean Michael Dargan, the best coping method proved to be writing a song about it.
Earlier this month, Dargan, a former member of The Kissers who fronts his own band, released “The Bright Side of the Virus,” a four-minute guitar-driven rocker that seeks out what he describes as “ the golden thread” in the pandemic that has claimed more than 200,000 lives worldwide. You can listen to “The Bright Side of the Virus” here.
“I was once publicly described as a ‘pathological optimist,’ but I recognize the fact that this shit is real, things are dark and people are dying,” says Dargan, a self-described Army brat who was born in Panama’s Canal Zone and grew up “everywhere” before settling in Madison 19 years ago. “My new song looks for the pandemic’s silver lining, the yin in the yang. No matter how glorious things are, they’re always seasoned by reality. No matter how bleak things become, there is always a touch of hope and possibility.”
Such sentiments drove the development of the song, recorded in Dargan’s home studio with the musician playing all the instruments. The song’s structure is neatly framed by two minor-key stanzas that address the pandemic’s threat in emotionally neutral tones. The break, sandwiched in between, turns more up-tempo, describing Dargan’s “golden thread”:
I will not make the same mistakes
Tap gently on the brakes
Make art just for art’s sake again
I will pause this busy life
Navigate this strife
Do yoga with my wife again
Dargan says the song grew out of his own journaling experiences after one week of staying safer at home with his wife, Jennifer, who works for Wisconsin Public Radio, and their two children. It was getting harder to tell one day from the next, the avowed extrovert says, and with no opportunity to perform he did the only thing he could while in isolation. He turned to songwriting.
“I wrestle with the muse pretty intensely, and I am not at all prolific. Songwriting comes hard for me,” Dargan says. “I am a more linear songwriter, and we all try to create the universal viewpoint from personal experiences.”
Part of Dargan’s inspiration came from seeing photos of Los Angeles and Shanghai, known as two of the world’s most polluted cities, before and after the pandemic drove everyone indoors. The clear skies that have resulted from the lack of pollution made an impression on him.
“The photos showed what looked like a brand new world, or at least one that had reset itself,” Dargan says. “Not only the future, but the present is better because we’re doing this other thing.”
Like all good artists, Dargan walked away from “The Bright Side of the Virus” slightly changed in his worldview, something he hopes his song communicates.
“I steer toward the optimistic,” he says. “As a student of history I know that the human race continues to do incredibly shitty things to each other, and yet we’re pretty resilient.
“Life is pretty much the here and now,” he adds. “That means treating people as an end, not a means, and doing things in the moment because it’s the only moment that we’re guaranteed.”
In addition to doing more yoga with his wife, Dargan plans to come away from his safer-at-home experience enriched, or at least better prepared for the future.
“At the moment I am working on a new record, at least in my mind. Preproduction is in full swing in my head,” says Dargan, who says he’s also been writing additional songs while in self-quarantine. “I may even have another new record written by the time I am ready to record the last one, which is a great problem to have.”
