Iggy Pop Wrote a Song About Covid-19

Iggy Pop just dropped a song about Covid-19 titled “Dirty Little Virus” because he’s Iggy Pop and he can do what he wants.

“Covid-19 is on the scene,” Pop growls in his distinctive voice, “the boys and girls can’t stop their world/Grandfather’s dead/Got Trump instead.” The song was co-written with Leron Thomas, who also played trumpet on the track.

“I was moved to write a direct lyric, not something too emotional or deep — more like journalism,” Pop said in an accompanying video. “It was a stopper for me. It’s been the big thing happening in my life and everybody’s else’s, I reckon, for almost a year now. If there was still a Man of the Year, it would be the virus.”

Pop most recently recorded a French-language version of Elvis Costello’s “No Flag” off the singer-songwriter’s new album, Hey Clockface. The duo appeared in Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians issue, where they discussed their friendship and their careers. “When I heard your music, I felt like you were the only thing coming out of the U.K. that wasn’t going along with the I’m-a-monster-with a-guitar-riff thing,” Pop told Costello. “The whole guitar riffage was going up and up and up. You were either that or, no offense to her, you were Lulu.”