THE QUARANTINE KID

Sal Donato is fighting isolation with music—and collaborating with readers!

Some people deal with their quarantine by becoming focused. Others go a little crazy. The Weekly World News’s musical correspondent, Sal Donato, decided to combine the two approaches. “I see the world through song,” he said. “Sometimes the songs are my own. I remember once last summer I saw a guy trip over a low stair, and I wrote a song called ‘Tripping Over a Low Stair.'”

Sometimes, though, they are other people’s songs.

“I have this affliction,” Donato said. “It’s not uncommon among musicians. When I get a melody in my head, even if it’s not my own, I start to make up other lyrics for it.”

That’s why he was both distressed and excited when he woke up one morning with the melody to the Knack’s power-pop classic “My Sharona” stuck in his head. “I knew immediately that I would have to write something called ‘My, Corona’ or ‘Hi, Corona’ or, ideally, ‘Bye, Corona,'” he said. “I looked around the internet, which is not something I usually do, but I’ve been quarantined, and I found lots of people making up parodies. I took one of the ones I found, which happened to be from a WWN reader, and asked him if I could finish it. He said yes, so long as I didn’t give him any credit. Weird request, but okay, man.”

The result of Sal’s collaboration with the unnamed WWN reader? “Why? Corona,” a new song that we are proud to premiere today