DieAlps! co-founder Frank Calcaterra wrote this three-minute rock song after Trump was elected in 2016. It didn’t fit with the style of his band’s album, so it’s being released as a solo cut under the Youth Remedies moniker. The sentiment—confusion and disappointment about half the country’s adoration of a sleazy salesman who cheated and lied his way to the Oval Office—hasn’t changed, but some optimism shines through in the chorus. The overall vibe, however, is worry, and it hasn’t aged well in three-and-a-half-years.
“After the initial shock of the election results I told myself it can't be as bad as they say. Surely his advisors and the real powers that be will prevent anything catastrophic from happening, but when I look around now it's so much worse than I could have ever imagined,” Calcaterra told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “1,000 people are dying every day from an airborne virus and we're reopening schools and everything else because the richest country in the world doesn't want to give ‘handouts.’"
“The spread of misinformation is fueling division and it's actually pretty concerning,” he added. “So the message I wanted to get across with this song is that we as people need to start looking into our own hearts and minds from time to time, and we need to stop being so easily swayed by memes and fake news headlines our friends are posting on Facebook.”
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