Singer-songwriter Jeremy Ivey braves downtown Nashville in a hazmat suit in the riotous new video for “Things Could Get Much Worse.” The song appears on Ivey’s upcoming album Waiting Out the Storm, which was produced by Ivey’s collaborator and wife, Margo Price.
Directed by Houston Mathews, the clip was shot in a single afternoon on a sunny summer day in Nashville. Ivey throws on a hazmat suit, complete with shoe coverings and latex gloves, then wrestles with brushing his teeth and drinking his coffee before heading out. On Lower Broadway, he’s met with plenty of stares, laughter, and some enthusiastic high-fives as he busks, dances, and cruises around on a Bird scooter.
Ivey seems to be having a blast, but not all of the folks around him get the joke — one woman in a restaurant flips him off, and Ivey ends up flipping off a camouflaged pickup truck during a street confrontation. It’s funny stuff that fits the loose, freewheeling arrangement of the song, which brings to mind Faces and the jammy “Get Back” era of the Beatles.
The “Things Could Get Much Worse” video is also personal for Ivey: while the party atmosphere of downtown Nashville continues mostly as normal (give or take a few masks), people are still getting sick and dying. Ivey had his own bout with Covid-19 earlier in the summer.
Waiting Out the Storm, like Ivey’s 2019 album The Dream and the Dreamer, will be released by Anti- Records. Price, meanwhile, released her latest album That’s How Rumors Get Started earlier in 2020. She’ll play the first of two livestream shows, with Ivey and her band, Wednesday night from Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl.