For this researcher, if there was a soundtrack to the last twelve months – particularly, beginning research on a major project on Global Encounters during a worldwide, isolating pandemic – it would be threefold.
Firstly, there were the pop culture contributions. Throughout 2020, it seemed on every trip to the supermarket – masked, lathered in sanitiser and strictly distanced – Split Enz’s classic Six Months in a Leaky Boat seemed to be blaring, tapping into narratives of long and treacherous sea journeys, hope and despair, and, of course, perfectly encapsulating the ennui of extended lockdown. Following on hotly from this – though never heard in the supermarket – was Mashd N Kutcher’s Get on the Beers, which offered a contemporary and very localised, Victorian response to Covid restrictions. Whatever gets you through the lockdown.