While election results coverage took centre stage on Tuesday night and such expections for the result, Arcade Fire made an appearance as the musical guests on Stephen Colbert’s special Election Night 2020: Democracy’s Last Stand: Building Back America Great Again Better 2020, debuting their new song “Generation A.” Colbert introduced the anthemic track as being “inspired by the current climate of the country. An exhausted and dispirited-looking Colbert described “Generation A” as being “inspired by the current climate of the country, with a hopeful message to the youths.” Really, though, the new Arcade Fire song is less hopeful than urgent.
Arcade Fire played “Generation A” live-in-studio, with most of the members of the band masked and with Win Butler giving his new bleach-blonde haircut its TV debut. An adorable little masked kid — presumably Butler and Régine Chassagne’s son — gave the song a rousing, echoed-out intro, and the band played the song, summoning much of the euphoric intensity that makes their live shows so transformative.
“Generation A,” it turns out, is a juiced-up, anthemic track about how the world needs to change right now. Lyrically, the song works as a rebuke to ideas about incremental change, about each generation getting its turn to take over: “They say wait until you’re ready/ Wait until your number’s called/ They say wait, all we need is love/ But darling, California’s burning, New Orleans is waiting for the flood.”
Considering the fact that the election results are still inconclusive up until friday evening, the song’s impatient hook, “I can’t wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait/ Too little too late,” is more than relatable. Most recently, Arcade Fire performed at Eaux Claires Festival, the Wisconsin music festival founded by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and the National’s Aaron Dessner, in support of statewide voting initiative “For Wisconsin.”
The Fat Angel Sings 