Arcade Fire’s Will Butler Shares Songs About the Brazilian Water Crisis and Black Holes

Every day this week, Arcade Fire‘s Will Butler is writing a new song based on a news story in The Guardian. Because of the BRIT Awards, there was no song yesterday, so today brings two new songs. The first concerns the water crisis in São Paulo, Brazil, and is titled “You Must Be Kidding“. The second, “Madonna Can’t Save Me Now”, is about a newly discovered black hole. Check them out above.

Butler on “You Must Be Kidding” at The Guardian‘s website:

The first time I went to São Paulo I was jet-lagged and relatively inexperienced with traveling. It was on the Funeral tour. I think we spent a day and a half in town, most of it inside the hotel which was behind a high fence with razor wire and armed guards outside. It was a weird, intense scene, that hotel.

I bet that hotel will figure out a way to get water no matter how low the supply gets.

On “Madonna Can’t Save Me Now”:

I had every intention of writing about the Brit Awards. It was a news event I was sure The Guardian would cover. I was pretty confident in Sam Smith and Taylor Swift. I could cheat a bit, prepare a couple zingers in advance.

But they just found a black hole 12bn times the mass of the sun and almost as old as the universe itself, so, whatever.

On Monday, he released “Clean Monday”, a song about the Greek debt crisis, followed by “Waving Flag”, inspired by articles about anti-apartheid figure Moses Kotane and Ukrainian separatists celebrating a holiday, on Tuesday. 

Read our interview with Butler.

Check out the video for “Anna”:

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