Being in quarantine we all have a lot of free time on our hands. Alec Benjamin has been very active on social media recently, and he came out with a new single called “Six Feet Apart” before the release of his new album, which has been pushed back. This song really puts social distancing into perspective and shows how it affects common people and how we miss each other. Through this song, we can look at not just the physical impacts of this pandemic, but the emotional and mental ones, too. 

Everyone experiencing the pandemic obviously can see that it is a big deal. Schools have been shut down, restaurants are closing, people are being fired, and working from home. Now we have laws that require social distancing inspiring. The name of this song, “Six Feet Apart.” Six feet does not seem like a lot. However, Benjamin has really explained his perspective through song. In the chorus, he sings “too far away to hold, but close enough to break my heart.” Such a heartbreaking line shows the other ways social distancing is not something we are used to. Because we are so unfamiliar with this, when it actually happens to us, we realize how much we miss our loved ones. Nevertheless, for the health of others, we stay “Six Feet Apart.”

 Furthermore, Benjamin addresses mental health and how it is affected by the relativity of time. When things are normal, we have things to keep us distracted and busy from our own minds. Benjamin has written many other songs regarding mental health, but, this one focuses on how quarantine might actually have a more direct effect on mental health than at a normal time. Now, we have so much time to think, and time goes a lot slower because our mind finally catches up. In the second verse, we hear him say “Time sticks like glue, I feel so blue, here missing you.” Benjamin, despite his small fanbase, has been known to be a fantastic lyricist being able to craft a deep message with so little words. That brand has been replicated in this quote where he is able to convey that in quarantine we do not have the people we love to be here and present with us. Instead, time and mental turmoil are able to catch up, thus, we are trapped in our own minds. 

Finally, we can see what was taken for granted before social distancing and quarantine all started. Things such as seeing our friends, laughing, talking, and crying with one another are all gone. The little things are all gone. In the chorus, he makes this message obvious to us singing, “Like star out in the cosmos, can’t touch the beauty that I see,” and then continuing, “I miss your smile, feels like miles, six feet apart.” With this pandemic, we miss out on so much that we had once considered being so unimportant, not thinking of how it would affect our mental health, our peers, our family, and life as we know it. I recommend this song to everyone at the moment going through quarantine and practicing social distancing. It reminds us that we are not alone, touching on topics no other song has to this moment.