Song premiere: " '63" by Jon Reynolds

“There are no two ways of saying it: this song is about sexism and racism,” said activist singer-songwriter Jon Reynolds when asked about today’s premiere. “My experiences in Tennessee over the past year and a half have caused me to seriously rethink the amount of progress our society has made concerning prejudice.

“My wife has been underpaid and disrespected at her work because she is a woman,” Reynolds continued. “We have both been openly criticized for having black friends and in-laws. As a whole project, I spoke heavily on these topics in all the songs,” he said, referring to his new EP, Generation, Love, which comes out August 5. “However, in this particular track, I wanted to be as clear as possible. I wanted to say, straight-out: ‘There are a lot of similarities between our current social problems and the problems that existed in the early ‘60s.’

“We associate racist and sexist behavior in our culture with that period of history, but many of its defining features — riots, bigoted speech, workplace harassment, unequal pay — have risen to the forefront of our nightly news reports once again,” Reynolds explained. “All in all, my inspiration for this song was the events in my life at that time. I felt like I was living in a different time period but looked around and saw it was my current peers who were contributing to prejudice.”