Worcester singer-songwriter Giuliano is back with “In The Bad Times,” his first new music since the self-titled album he released in late 2022, and it’s just in time.
There’s a piece of poetry from the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who fled Nazi Germany as a political dissident, that first reached a new generation after the 2016 election, made the rounds again during the 2020 lockdowns, and popped up everywhere once again in November.
He wrote, “In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing — about the dark times.”
“In The Bad Times” began its life as a love song, but after Donald Trump was re-elected president in November 2024, it became something else, something that almost directly quotes the poem in the chorus.
In the weeks between the election and the January inauguration, fear bred more fear for LGBT Americans in particular, who worried about what an administration that ran on such a homophobic and anti-transgender platform would bring. (Some of those worries have already been proven true.)
At the same time, Giuliano took a lyric he’d been turning over in his head for a while, “I’m still gonna love you in the bad times,” and decided to put it to use.
“A lot of us were struggling with how to cope with what was coming and the fear of the unknown, all the uncertainty,” Giuliano said. “I had that concept for a little while, thinking it might be a love song about the bad times of a relationship, but then I started writing the song and it took on a new meaning based on where everything was in the world.”
The music video, directed by Boston filmmaker Malik Maliki, was filmed over the course of a 12-hour day at a warehouse in Millbury, and Giuliano said the storyline Maliki came up with, which ends with a disco ball dance party, was a perfect fit for the song.
“It’s the message that we need to stick together in the bad times, and that doesn’t have to always be hard work,” Giuliano said. “That can also mean having a good time, and sometimes, just having a good time can be an act of rebellion as a queer person.”
The first thing you hear when you hit play is not music but a weather report warning Massachusetts to brace for an incoming snowstorm, and we join a duo sitting on a couch as they jump from channel to channel, searching for a rare bit of good news.
As Giuliano’s harmonica comes in, we wander through bars and alleys, unable to get away from the troubles of the world as described by TV broadcasters: AI shoehorned into every piece of technology, hate crimes, Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant “they’re eating the dogs” fictions from last year’s presidential debate.
Worcester drag queen DaishaDore Famouz does her makeup in a glamorous backstage mirror with a look of exasperation on her face. Giuliano stands alone under a spotlight, and then he’s in the midst of a party, pouring a drink behind the bar.
“Come out and meet me tonight down at the bar that we like/I could use a distraction/Trying to hide from the fever inside/Threw my phone at the TV,” he sings.
As Giuliano recalled, a friend of his compared the song to both Tom Petty and Chappell Roan at once on first listen, and the pre-chorus sets up an East Coast answer to the Pink Pony Club, a place to keep on dancing in spite of it all.
“The world might fall apart, but should we run away/It’s cold in Massachusetts, but I still love this place,” he sings. “I know you’re gonna cry, but you don’t have to suffer/I will be there for you when you need a lover in the bad times.”
‘Those are the kinds of songs I love’
When times are tough, you need to find something fun to do in order to find the strength to keep fighting, and for the cast of the video, that’s dancing the night away with people who are going through the same thing. Since filming, Giuliano said, that’s now what he pictures when he hears the song, too.
“When you’re writing a song, you have a certain picture in your mind, but now all I see is the video,” Giuliano said. “Some people don’t like that about music videos, telling you what to see and what to think about it, but for this one, I really like it. I hear less of what the song is about and I think about June 1 and how wonderful that day was.”
“In The Bad Times” is not Giuliano’s first social commentary song, as he released “Don’t Pray For Me,” about gun violence, a few years ago, but he said the two songs took very different approaches.
“A lot of people liked ‘Don’t Pray For Me,’ but I felt like in some ways, it was a little preachy,” Giuliano said. “My goal was to take something heavy and difficult but wrap it in a pop song that, if you’re not listening to the lyrics, is just a fun song to play in the car or around the house. If you listen on the surface, it’s fun. If you dig a little deeper, it makes you sick. Those are the kinds of songs I love.”
“In The Bad Times” is available on music streaming services, and the music video is available on YouTube.
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