Rosanne Cash and John Paul White, formerly of The Civil Wars, have joined together on the new single “We’re All in This Together Now.” All proceeds from the song will benefit Nashville-based Music Health Alliance.
While the gentle ballad wasn’t written during the coronavirus pandemic, the video reflects our current situation while we shelter-in-place and deal with the effects of COVID-19. The clip shares footage from around the world — from hospitals to food banks — of people helping others through these troubling times.
It seems the song was just waiting for the right time to be released. “John Paul and I have been friends for years, and early on we awkwardly tossed the idea of writing a song together, but we never got around to it,” Cash says in a statement. “The last few years have been tough. I wanted to find some little corner of community, some instinct toward unity. It was hard to find, so I figured I’d have to write it. Last year, I wrote these lyrics and sent them to John Paul. He wrote this gorgeous melody very quickly. I was so moved. But the song didn’t fit on my last record, and it didn’t fit on his last record, so it sat there waiting for just the right moment. Which is now.”
Adds White, “I don’t believe I’ve ever been a part of something that foretold things to come as vividly as this song, or something that would feel so relevant months after its completion. I loved the song, but for whatever reason it hadn’t yet seen the light of day. I had recorded a guitar/vocal of the song in my studio in Florence, Alabama. Once it dawned on me recently how prescient the song was, I asked Rosanne if she’d be willing to put her voice on it. She said, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’”
Music Health Alliance, which provides assistance to members of the music community, has been added as a partner in the Spotify COVID-19 Music Relief Project. Spotify is matching donations made to select charities, up to a collective total of $10 million. MHA’s relief resources include financial assistance for groceries, medications, health insurance premiums and doctor visits, navigating the loss of health insurance and filing unemployment.
