Clean Monday

Album: Single Release Only (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the first of a series of songs written, recorded and released by Will Butler based on news headlines from the UK newspaper The Guardian. The tune was inspired by a story on Greece's debt crisis. Butler said: "I'm rooting for Greece. I mean, broadly, who the hell isn't rooting for Greece? Even if you're super right wing, or super German, or super capitalist you probably don't want Greece tumbling out of the Euro and defaulting on its debts."

    He added: "I was reading The Guardian's live coverage of the forthcoming Greek proposals of how they're going to pay off their debts, when a little blurb popped up explaining that the Greek markets were closed today because it was "Clean Monday" – the Greek Orthodox equivalent of Ash Wednesday. It was an amazing/hilarious (well, maybe mildly amusing) coincidence to me that the Greek ministers were scrambling and figuring out how to avoid strict austerity on the day that Lent starts."

    "And all this scrambling is just to figure out the next few months. It's gonna be a long winter, and a long spring, and maybe a really long summer for Greece. But my fingers are crossed."

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