Twins Tim and Fred Williams
The first six months of 2020 brought enough bad news to fill a couple of decades, right? It takes effort some days to find something good, something that will make you smile. At least that's been my experience.So I turned to reading - a lot of books, and I'll use a different post to write about the books I've read these past months. My husband and I watch Netflix and Amazon Prime - choosing travel and food shows, classic movies, documentaries. I've been poking around YouTube as well, and last week I found this channel, and I couldn't be happier."Twins the New Trend" is the channel of twins Tim and Fred Williams, 22-year-old Gary, Indiana natives whose musical knowledge was mostly limited to rap. They post their reactions to songs, usually classics recommended to them by their subscribers. (I didn't know this was a thing! But apparently it is - of course, because everything is on YouTube).Anyway, on July 27, after their channel had been up and running for months, they reacted to Phil Collins's "In the Air Tonight," a song that goes back to 1981, when I was 23 and the twins hadn't been born yet (possible their mother hadn't been born yet). Their reaction to the drum solo at three minutes in is priceless. Watch:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3-iufiywU&w=560&h=315]Well, that video went viral on Twitter, and within a couple of weeks, the twins have seen their subscriber count rise by hundreds of thousands. What makes these young men so appealing is their honesty and open-minded attitude towards all genres of music. It's refreshing and fills me with hope. They listen to the song. Watch how they react to Dolly Parton's "Jolene," a song that is nearly 50 years old - and country![youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pEPFYiJOXU&w=560&h=315]Tim (usually seen on the left, or by himself) and his twin brother Fred, are willing to watch anything, and their fans have given them plenty of suggestions. The men have reacted to Luciano Pavarotti, Frank Sinatra, Adele, Eminem, Queen, The Carpenters, and Elvis:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=597QMUhmqgQ&w=560&h=315]So why are they so successful? Why do they have more than 427,000 subscribers? I don't know. Maybe it's people like me watching someone younger react for the first time to a song I know so well. Maybe it's because they're young Black men who decided to open their minds (and ears) to something besides rap, and we're seeing their honest reactions. Maybe it's because, in their younger selves, we can relive our own wondrous younger days that were filled with songs on the radio. For whatever reason, this past week has given me a few things that have filled me with hope, and the twins are one of them.