Sometimes great art emerges from difficult times, either personally, socially, or politically. For Hamilton-based alternative folk singer S.G. Sinnicks, the tumultuous situation south of the Canadian border is what makes the excellent, pensive and timely “Miss America 2.0” so poignant. For Sinnicks, the song is “equal parts love song and lament” from the standpoint “of a neutral observer.”
“I spent so many years playing and touring in the U.S. seeing the growing fractures in a society that is too important to fracture and the pain in my American-born wife, friends and family as it went downhill,” Sinnicks says of “Miss America 2.0.” “The title is a bit of a play on words. Both reflecting that I miss an America that used to value things like compassion and intelligence and using an aging beauty queen in her MISS AMERICA sash for her once beautiful country.”
“Miss America 2.0,” a remake of a song entitled “Miss America” Sinnicks wrote and released on his 2012 album The Last Irishman In Corktown, is a splendid revisiting of the original with Sinnicks describing the new single as “slower and more atmospheric.” Falling in a vein similar to the likes of Wilco, Tim Easton, Rod Picott or John Prine with a mid-tempo roots seasoning throughout, “Miss America 2.0” features multi-instrumentalist Mike Boguski (piano, organ, accordion) fleshing out the extremely well-crafted track. And Sinnicks’ voice and incisive lyrics shine on the single which Sinnicks says “needed to be a little darker and sharper” than the previous version, mirroring the “world overall.”
Some know the prices and some folks know the amounts
But what do you do when a generation forgets how to count
Too many weapons and too short a fuse
Everybody’s working harder for the benefit of so very few
“Miss America 2.0” is the “first piece transformed” from Sinnicks rich discography and songbook, an idea where legacy material is retooled for new audiences. Or as Sinnicks says a “scaled-up re-release.” The musician feels the single speaks to a larger audience now in a world which survived a global pandemic but “pushed so many people who were already barely hanging on over the edge.” Sinnicks says the edgier, darker atmosphere “reflects the increasing anger and sadness we are feeling today.”
A video for “Miss America 2.0,” created by Peter Riddihough and starring Nora Hutchinson, was also made to visually drive home the message Sinnicks cleverly and thoughtfully executes almost effortlessly.
“Sometimes all I can do as a humble songwriter is call it as I see it and hope the message finds a home in the hearts and minds that it was intended for,” he says. “The song is written from the point of view of the helpless observer. I’m sure any Canadian watching American politics can relate.”
If “Miss America 2.0” is the first of a series of songs S.G. Sinnicks retools from his cherished catalog, Canadian, American and international lovers of brilliant alt-folk music will be all the better and richer for it.
