What was once: "Nails, hair, hips, heels, ass fat, lips real / Purse full, big bills, bitch I'm a big deal" is now "Mask, gloves, soap, scrubs, TikTok, Grubhub / Twinks, jocks, bears, cubs, Zoom is the new club."
"Mask, Gloves, Soap, Scrubs" is one of six songs on Hall's new album, Quarantine Queen. On Hall's YouTube page, he explains that he wrote the new album in four days.
"Nina Simone once said, 'It's an artist's duty to reflect the times,'" Hall writes on YouTube. "I wrote this album in four days because I noticed a lot of people were down and needing something to uplift them, make them smile and want to dance during this dark time. I by no means am attempting to diminish the severity of this pandemic, but trying to show that you can still be creative, still have fun and be fabulous from the comfort of your own home. I hope you enjoy, I hope it inspires you to dance (tag me, I will be watching and sharing) and I hope it brightens your day just a tad. Love you all and please stay safe. We are going to get through this. Mwah."
Hall, an Arlington native, might be best known as an American Idol alumnus, or Taylor Swift's best friend, co-executive producer and star of Swift's "You Need To Calm Down" music video. But he's has a career of his own; he's created his own music and videos for years now, including mashups of popular artists, like Swift and Beyonce. He starred in Broadway's Kinky Boots and in 2016, he self-released Straight Outta Oz, "a visual concept album that borrows imagery from The Wizard of Oz," according to a previous Observer article.
On Quarantine Queen, there are six songs, including "Mas(k)ot," which includes cameos from Jerry Harris, star of Cheer, a Netflix documentary that followed Navarro College's cheer squad, as well as Navarro's coach, Monica Aldama. "Yo the times are crazy and the news is scary," Hall sings. "But we still mad-talking like our name was Jerry" — a nod to Harris' "mat talk" he was known for. Later in the song, Aldama says, "Jerry, Todrick / Y'all both made mat." Listeners can hear Harris in the background throughout the song and finally at the end, Harris says, "OK, we ready for Daytona now.""I'm always constantly out looking for inspiration from random things, and so I think that anything that I watch, it's just in my nature to look at something and not see it only for what it is but for what it could possibly be as well."– Todrick Hall
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Also on the album is "Tiktok," a song that begins with Hall singing, "COVID-19 just slapped me and my plans were all ruined / I got this app just to see what everybody was doing." The song is a humorous look at how during quarantine most of us downloaded TikTok out of curiosity. Now, 100 days in to quarantine, we think we're "Internet famous." Hall takes it one step further by singing, "I got famous on a Wednesday, showed me mom on Thursday / she was posting pics by Friday because she's so hella thirsty."
The song is fitting for Hall, considering his songs have seen success on the app. Charli D'Amelio, the app's most-followed person with 68 million followers, posted a dance to Hall's "Attention" that got 11 million likes.
Hall's "Mask, Gloves, Soap, Scrubs," the final song on Quarantine Queen, is starting to gain some traction on TikTok, and it's perfect for people still choosing to take COVID-19 seriously. Lisa Rinna, star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, posted a TikTok of herself dancing with a broom to Hall's song.
Hall told us in late 2017 that a lot of his creative ideas come when he's in the shower or driving around and looking at billboards and different scenery.
"I'm always inspired," he said in 2017. "I'm always constantly out looking for inspiration from random things, and so I think that anything that I watch, it's just in my nature to look at something and not see it only for what it is but for what it could possibly be as well."
Creating in a short period of time isn't anything new for Hall. He also told us in 2017 that he changed his entire Straight Outta Oz album two weeks before its release.
"There was a lot of hesitation, but I've learned over the past few years from my experiences on American Idol and doing Broadway that my instincts, if they're strong instincts, are never wrong," he told us. "When my heart just tells me to do something, it's an undeniable thing. I can't ignore it."