My Playlist for Online Teaching in the Age of Corona
In the film Baby Driver (2017), the get-away driver, Baby, gets stuck in the clutch thanks to his inability to immediately garner the right playlist at the right time.
In the bank robbery scene, the three Mike Myers-masked (Austin Powers not Halloween) thieves, are ready to jump out of the car and commit the crime. Baby stops them and says,
“Wait wait, I have to start the song over.”
He cues up his iPod to ‘Neat Neat Neat’ by The Damned. The scenes are punctuated with this kind of heated devotion to musical starts and stops. Baby’s get-away driving is only activated when his playlist is in effect.
Recently, in My Spy (2020), Dave Bautista’s character JJ, is a CIA undercover agent in Pripyat, Ukraine at an abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant. He struggles with a similar soundtrack snafu as he jumps in a military jeep for the get-away after an arms deal goes bad. He peels out to Nena’s 1983 hit, ’99 Luftballon’ (original German version.) JJ finds this unsuitable get-away music and changes the station until he settles on Britney Spears’s, ‘Baby one more time.’ Then I realize I’m not alone when it comes to finding just the right playlist to get the job done. I’ve been thinking about the herculean job that many educators are tackling in the turn of online teaching or distance learning. I decided to create my own playlist for online teaching to strengthen the momentum during a pandemic so I can bring my best to the virtual classroom. As I started compiling this list, I was surprised by how appropriate some of these jams are in this moment. I’m sure The Commodores were not thinking about online teaching when they penned ‘Zoom’ back in 1977. Nor was Aretha Franklin thinking about zoom bombing when she sang, ‘Who’s Zoomin Who?’ in 1985. This is my ode to the playlist in the age of the corona virus. Keep on Jammin.
· The Commodores, ‘Zoom’
Aretha Franklin, ‘Who’s Zoomin Who?’
Spoon, ‘I Turn My Camera On’
Bon Jovi, ‘Raise Your Hands’
The Beatles, ‘Come Together’
Janet Jackson, ‘Together Again’
Queen and David Bowie, ‘Under Pressure’
