CHARLOTTE LAWRENCE - GOD MUST BE DOING COCAINE

Charlotte Lawrence delivers a state of the union on the weird world we're living on "God Must Be Doing Cocaine."

CHARLOTTE LAWRENCE - GOD MUST BE DOING COCAINE

"May you live in interesting times." This proverb sounds like a blessing but was actually intended as a curse. Interesting times and a peaceful life don't always go together hand-in-hand.

While living in interesting times might not be great for mental peace, it can be very good for artists indeed. Interesting times give artists endless topics to mine for inspiration. The events of the last 3.5 years should yield inspiration for years to come.

"God Must Be Doing Cocaine" is Charlotte Lawrence's take on activist, socially-conscious music. While it's some of her most political work to date, it's also some of her most personal.

Charlotte Lawrence told People magazine, regarding the origins of "God Must Be Doing Cocaine," "I think every artist has a responsibility to share their voice and their opinion and their thoughts on what they believe in. t has been hard for me to put that feeling into words [because I didn’t] know how to do it without offending people or feeling like I’m speaking for anybody but myself. So I just looked at what was going on around me and what was happening to my friends or the people I knew and I wrote about it. [The song] is just what’s happening around me — what I don’t like, what scares me and what I want to change.”

Zombies. Sentient robots. Body modification. School shootings. These are just some of the endless litany of the details of the "interesting times" we're currently living in. Luckily, "God Must Be Doing Cocaine" doesn't come across as some "We Are The World" kumbaya hand-holding singalong. Instead, it's a stark, lean, futuristic pop song, nearly skeletal yet still lush. It's Lawrence at her most vulnerable and most revealing, letting her gorgeous vocals shine through, and letting you appreciate the starshine synths and sparkling digital production.

So may you live in interesting times, indeed, if it yields pop music of such stellar quality as this. We Are: The Guard feel like it's almost worth it, provided we survive it all.

J. Simpson occupies the intersection between criticism, creativity, and academia. Based out of Portland, Or., he is the author of Forestpunk, an online journal/brand studying the traces of horror, supernatural, and the occult through music, fashion and culture. He plays in the dreamfolk band Meta-Pinnacle with his partner Lily H. Valentine, with whom he also co-founded Bitstar Productions, a visual arts collective focused on elevating Pop Culture to High Art.