{"id":8972,"date":"2023-09-27T16:06:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T21:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/?p=8972"},"modified":"2024-11-02T14:43:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T19:43:41","slug":"behind-the-end-of-covid-song-welcome-back-to-the-land-of-the-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/behind-the-end-of-covid-song-welcome-back-to-the-land-of-the-living\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the End-of-Covid Song: &#8220;Welcome Back (to the Land of the Living)&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes songs just take awhile. Case in point:&#8221;Welcome Back (to the Land of the Living),&#8221; the title track from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/music\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the new record<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jzCvQRHd3hs?si=rkRsBDcZb6tX3U2q\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center><strong>Here&#8217;s the backstory:<\/strong> Years ago, I had a good pal who would occasionally &#8220;go dark&#8221; (his words) and not respond to phone, text, email for weeks and weeks at a time. He later told me in confidence that he suffered from bouts of depression, and he&#8217;d resurface when all was better. It&#8217;s how he dealt with it. I came up with that title &#8211; and a song &#8211; that never went anywhere, so I shelved it.<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward to the golden years of the Covid pandemic. I had a couple of songs (<a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/1d_g-rL5T7w?si=9JXITX2IOo6LqZIy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Day Drinking Days,&#8221;<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/w1akA6QY1V0?si=SUMXH02jzda9oo95\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;See You On the Other Side&#8221;<\/a>) that talked about the early days, but I wanted a tune to celebrate when the thing finally subsided. I brought out that title and wrote this &#8220;Welcome Back,&#8221; anthem-like piece. Fun fact: I wrote this in late 2020, because everything was going to be fine. Of course, that was premature, so I figured &#8220;maybe in 2021&#8230;.er&#8230;maybe 2022?&#8221; I finally released it on the new record this past spring.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ba8X1GOqU4g?si=FXOYWEmTZm5EL5X2\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center>The tune also goes over well live. People can relate.<\/p>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.michaelgaither.com%2Fhome%2Fbehind-the-end-of-covid-song-welcome-back-to-the-land-of-the-living%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;&amp;width=800&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:800px;height:30px;margin-top:5px;\"><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes songs just take awhile. Case in point:&#8221;Welcome Back (to the Land of the Living),&#8221; the title track from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8972"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8979,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972\/revisions\/8979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelgaither.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}