Song of the Day 6/26: Michael Stipe and Aaron Dessner, “No Time for Love”

I’m so old I can remember when record companies would have made a big deal about a collaboration between Michael Stipe, late of R.E.M., and Big Red Machine, itself a collaboration between Aaron Dessner of the National and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. In these times of COVID, they do it differently. Stipe and Dessner, who co-wrote this song, unveiled it with relatively little fanfare in a live split-screen performance on Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show.”

How did it come about? “On a whim, I shared a folder of in-progress BRM sketches with Michael last year, and it was exciting when he really gravitated to a few of them,” Dessner told Rolling Stone. “Michael wrote the lyrics to ‘No Time for Love Like Now’ last fall, but when the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and social-distancing and self-isolation descended, they felt like they were written about this time all along and perhaps the message resonates especially now.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRWgIFE0CJ0