Chloe Langford, a seventh grader at Carl Sandburg Middle School in suburban Mundelein, got a homework assignment last week that’s probably pretty common: Describe your day at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more: All of WBEZ’s coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak in Chicago and the region
Chloe’s teacher suggested a paragraph, poem or song. Chloe said the choice was easy. “Being the music family, I picked song,” Chloe said. Chloe plays ukulele, trombone, piano and is learning euphonium, which, in case you were wondering, is kind of like a petite tuba. Chloe’s dad, Paul, is a musician and has a home studio. Chloe’s sister, Cassidy, just started playing percussion.
Chloe also sings. The result is “All Day Long (The Coronavirus Song).” As of this writing, the 3-minute homemade music video has been viewed more than 40,000 times.
After telling her parents about the assignment, Chloe and her family got to work. “We sat down at the piano and wrote stuff that we were doing on a list and then actually made rhymes out of it and then put chords with it,” Chloe explained.
Some of those rhymes include: “We’ve sorted Legos. We’ve played Catan. We’ve ridden scooters. We’ve washed our hands,” and “Zoom with my friends, Zoom with my cousins, eatin’ potato chips by the dozen.”
Chloe said she misses her friends and knows she won’t see them for at least another month because of the quarantine. She stays plugged into news about the coronavirus through CNN 10, the 10-minute newscasts produced by the national network for students. “I don’t really get freaked out by the news,” Chloe said. “It’s nice to have an update.”
Being a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Chloe plans to continue making music. “I want to be a band teacher when I’m older, because I have some great band teachers,” she said. And the assignment? Chloe’s dad reports that her teacher loved it.
Carrie Shepherd covers arts and culture for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @cshepherd.
