Nothing At All

Album: Whoosh! (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • This track deals with global warming, something even the septuagenarians in Deep Purple are worried about. The group came up with the music idea when they were working in Germany, but lead singer Ian Gillan came up with the lyric when he was in Nashville, where the band was recording the Whoosh! album. In a Songfacts interview with Gillan, he said: "When we first started the song, I fell in love with it. The interchange between the guitar and the keyboards had kind of a capricious mood to it. It was cheeky and mischievous. One night, sitting in my little cottage by the Cumberland River across from the Grand Ole Opry, where I could hear the music, it came to me: We're in a pretty precarious situation and we're not taking it seriously enough.

    So, I thought of Mother Nature as an old lady in the song, and I thought of the line, 'And she blew all the leaves off my tree,' which I thought was a nice pictorial description of the situation that potentially could happen. Then I wanted to reflect on the nonchalance of society. It's a juxtaposition of me and the nonchalance and the severity of the situation. It's just a little angle on a big issue."
  • Musically, Deep Purple is known for heavy soundscapes that can rattle the windows, but this one is much lighter, simulating the collective laissez-faire attitude toward climate change - that it's "nothing at all."
  • This is the third single from Whoosh!, the third Deep Purple album produced by Bob Ezrin, whose CV includes Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies, Kiss' Destroyer, and Pink Floyd's The Wall. Ezrin was on the same musical wavelength as the band and encouraged them to jam in the studio like they do live. If he didn't like what he heard, he would stop the action with his famous catch phrase: "I'm not liking it!"
  • The song's music video follows an astronaut on a trippy Earthly mission. The space traveler, whose likeness resembles the album artwork for Whoosh!, also features in the clip for "Throw My Bones."

Comments: 1

  • Hans Naus from NetherlandsI saw Deep Purple perform in Amsterdam, although they are old in age, I still had the feeling there were a bunch of young boys playing, I didn't hear the new album yet, so I was a bit reluctant when I heared the new songs specially when you compaired them with there old time hits, Highway star and Smoke on the water (which was loudly chanted by the audience). At home I Searched for the new album online. This song in particular caught my attention because it depicts the typical English way of putting you head in the sand when big problems arise on the horizon. "bottoms up lads"it's nothing at all. Plaed the song multiple times every day since then

    Damn they were good...
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