This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Amanda Petrusich. I'm a staff writer for the magazine where I write mostly about music.

And I'm David Remnick. I've asked Amanda to join me today because we're going to be talking

about music during the pandemic and at this strange and unique moment in history.

Music is one of the only things that has kept me feeling sane and grounded recently.

At the same time, the pandemic has been devastating for musicians, like so many other workers.

Concerts of all kinds were canceled, and that affects everything from your local bar bands to giant festivals like South by Southwest.

So what we're going to do today, we're going to have live performances from two artists who released records this year.

John Legend is the winner of about, I don't know, a dozen Grammy Awards,

one of them for the song Glory that he wrote for the film Selma.

And then Amanda is going to talk with Phoebe Bridgers,

who's become a real star of the indie music world.

Being in quarantine has been, for me, a really great time

to listen obsessively, carefully, slowly to music.

David, have you found any new music that's been sticking with you?

Does the new Bob Dylan album count as new music? I think there's a four-hour song on there that I've

listened to 25 times. But other than that, no kidding, I've been listening to a lot of old soul

music, which seems to kind of, I don't know, lift me up out of the sloth of Despond.

I understand that.

That music's perfect for that.

And I, too, have been really deep into that Dylan record.

I mean, it feels like it arrived at kind of the precise right moment.

...