My Inspiration: William Denton Wilde – We Are The Virus

Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s one-man music-maker, William Denton Wilde drops two brand new tracks, We Are The Virus and My Heroin, available on all major streaming services. These ominous offerings provide a reflective soundtrack to the world we find ourselves in, with synthy, cinematic notes of Depeche Modes, Suicide and The Jesus And Mary Chain. 

Here, William tells us about the inspiration behind lead single We Are The Virus, a beat driven,  fuzzed up affair complete with a dark vocal discussing political apathy in the UK…

We Are The Virus started off as a silly ditty that I came up with at the start of the first lockdown, when things were at the early stages and it was still a bit of a novelty.

People were panic buying in bulk and the streets and roads were pretty empty. This was when, in some peoples words, nature was reclaiming its natural habitat and the #wearethevirus and #natureishealing hashtags started to appear. They also started to appear in tweets where people were tagging them onto pictures of porn mags and pasta appearing back on supermarket shelves.

I was using the spare time to learn synths and computers, to expand the WDW sound a bit, and I had this silly ditty about ‘Miley Cyrus Smiley Virus’, that I’d put to a synth riff just for the amusement of a Whatsapp group.

What started out as a bit of fun soon darkened as the lockdown progressed. ‘Miley Cyrus…’ became ‘We Are The Virus’, as the first lockdown Summer brought litter and people strewn beaches and beauty spots, clapping for the NHS was followed quickly by VE Day death congas and plague raves.

This then ran into BLM and the resulting culture wars around statues and flags on both sides of the Atlantic. The song was conceived at the start of Covid but is just as relevant today, with anti-masks protests and various conspiracy theories clogging the streets along with all the litter. It’s certainly a dispiriting time.