A music video featuring 101 Vancouver residents is making its rounds online with the music speaking to those who have struggled with Vancouver’s tumultuous housing market.
Vancouver-based songwriter Corbin Murdoch released ‘The Best Place I Ever Lived’ on Dec. 4. The song is the lead single off his new album, Blind Contour, which arrives early in 2021. The album will be Murdoch’s first new music in over six years.
The video, shot and edited by Murdoch and videographer Sam Tudor, presents a broad tapestry of people from all walks of life standing outside their Vancouver homes. The Vancouverites are seen alone, or with roommates or family, as Murdoch sings over a mix of his guitar playing, a dobro played by Tim Tweedale and drumming by Barry Mirochnick.
The song stems from Murdoch's experience living in the city all his life but sometimes feeling like he doesn’t belong.
“Precarity and displacement take an emotional toll,” Murdoch said. “I wanted to write about the experience of living through that.”
Through the filming of the video he spoke - socially distanced - with many of its participants. In an interview with Vancouver Is Awesome he reflected on the conversations he had with them about the song’s theme.
"I think it's something that all Vancouverites have reckoned with in one way or another,” he said adding that he believes everyone knows someone who has moved away or gotten evicted from the places they love to live in.
To Murdoch, the song is meant to put a common experience into verse so people can recognize themselves and recognize their own struggle with affordability.
"When I was thinking about a concept I wanted to really focus on what makes this city great," he said. "While it's about the struggles we face I also wanted it to be a sort of reaffirmation of what a city ultimately is and that's its people."
You can listen to "The Best Place I Ever Lived" now on Bandcamp or Spotify.
