“Everything I do is a temporary fix,” Maggie Rose laments in her new song “20/20,” written and recorded in the early days of the quarantine.
Beginning as a gentle solo piano ballad, “20/20” transitions into a full-band swoon, with the Nashville soul singer finding a glimmer of hope in a really bad year. “I’ve seen strangers be neighbors and stars shine greater,” she sings, before envisioning a day when the crisis is over. “Oh how sweet it’ll taste when we finally know we’ve made it.”
Rose wrote “20/20” with Alex Haddad, Larry Florman, and Sarah Tomek, and she stresses it was a song that took time and connection to truly coalesce.
“It started to form when those endless days under quarantine began to blur together, right around the time when all of those bread starters people had been making were ready to yield some loaves. Instead of bread making, I opted to trudge up the hill in our backyard to our shed where an old electric keyboard had been patiently waiting for someone to play it. Performing my songs on piano was the big one on my list of ‘things I will do when I have the time’ and let’s face it, I had the time and desperately needed the inspiration,” Rose says in a statement.
“20/20” is a gorgeous listen, underscoring the need to remember the little things in our darkest hours. “It’s not in our nature to ignore the silver lining, to take for granted the collaborative spirit that we had reinforced in each other, to forget about the improvement and self-discovery we were all making on an individual and global scale, to miss the neighborly gestures we were receiving from people who used to avoid engaging,” she says. “We hope that as people reflect with us on this year and the pain it has dealt us, they will still allow themselves to imagine how sweet it will taste when we finally know we’ve made it.”
Rose says she had Bill Withers in mind when she wrote it (the R&B singer died in March). On Monday, September 14th, she and special guests like Devon Gilfillian and the Barber Brothers Brass Band will re-create Withers’ 1973 album Live at Carnegie Hall in a free livestream on YouTube. Donations raised will benefit the Good Life Fund, Equity Alliance, and the Americana Music Association.