Rupert Till at the University of Huddersfield, UK is not only a Professor of Music, but he is also a DJ known as Professor Chill and the current Chair of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, which is considered to be the world’s leading body in the field of music.
He has now used his expertise to put together a collection of tracks in three different playlists to help us cope better with the current Covid-19 crisis.
“Like most people, I’m locked away at home much of the time. The radio is full of the same gloomy news stories, my son is not at school and is climbing the walls, no-one is sleeping well as we’re not getting out enough and my diet is not as healthy as I’d like but, music can change our environment through the day,” said the professor.
The playlists are available on the music platform Spotify, with the first, Good Morning World!, designed to get your day off to a brighter start with tracks such as “Wake Up Boo!” by the Boo Radley, “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers and Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”.
“Waking up and starting the day is important. It’s vital to keep a structured day, getting up at the same time as normal, so that you can get to sleep at night,” said Professor Till.
Professor Till refers to his second selection, Songs to Lift Your Mood, as his “happy playlist,” and has included tracks such as “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, “Walking On Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves and Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World.”
The final playlist, And Relax, includes “chilled and ambient tunes to soothe your mind” such as “Over The Rainbow” by Eve Cassidy, “At The River” by Groove Armada and the “Flower Duet” from Delibes’s opera Lakmé.
“At some point, you are going to need to chill out, slow down and get some mental space. With so much going on in the world the time to calm down, recover and process what’s going on has never been more important, along with the need to relax and spend a little ‘me time’.
These are some tunes to help with that, to slow down your heartbeat and rest,” said Professor Till, adding that, “Songs have the power to change our mood, set the environment, they provide an acoustic ecology, a soundscape that surrounds us and envelops us.”
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