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The List Of Musicians With Coronavirus Keeps Getting Bigger

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The coronavirus has found its way into the recording booth, and the list of infected musicians won’t stop growing.

By early April 2020, COVID-19 had reached deep into the music industry, sidelining producers, veteran rockers, and folk legends alike. The most detailed account came from Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt, just 29, whose blow-by-blow retelling of his illness became a cautionary tale for younger fans who assumed the virus wasn’t their problem. His story, paired with a growing roster of infected artists, painted a stark picture of how fast this thing was moving through the industry.

• Producer Andrew Watt, known for his work with Post Malone, Ozzy Osbourne, and Cardi B, went from feeling “hit by a bus” on March 6 to being placed on an oxygen breathing machine within days.
• Watt was initially refused a coronavirus test after an ER visit diagnosed him with pneumonia, and only got tested after seeking out a private doctor.
• By early April, the list of infected music figures had expanded to include Jackson Browne, Duran Duran’s John Taylor, Christopher Cross, Marianne Faithfull, and John Prine.

Andrew Watt’s Rapid Decline

Watt’s ordeal started on the morning of March 6, when he woke up bedridden, describing the sensation as being “hit by a bus.” A doctor initially dismissed the possibility of coronavirus outright, reasoning that Watt hadn’t traveled internationally and split his time between the studio and home. That assessment didn’t hold up. Watt developed severe chills, a fever, and a dry cough so relentless he said it left him “delusional.”

An emergency room visit produced a pneumonia diagnosis, but Watt was denied a COVID-19 test on the spot because he didn’t meet the federal screening criteria in place at the time. He eventually tracked down a private physician willing to administer the test, which came back positive. His condition kept worsening until he needed an oxygen breathing machine just to get through the illness.

“I can’t stress this enough. This is not a joke. Stay inside, stay sanitized. Please stop everything and take care of yourselves and the people you love around you, until we are all through this.”

A Growing Industry Roster

Watt’s case wasn’t isolated — it was part of a fast-expanding list of music industry names confronting the virus head-on. Veteran rocker Jackson Browne confirmed his diagnosis, as did Duran Duran bassist John Taylor. Singer Christopher Cross and British icon Marianne Faithfull also joined the roster of infected artists, alongside folk legend John Prine, whose condition drew particular concern given his age and health history.

The pattern across these cases was consistent: symptoms that started mild or moderate before escalating quickly, and in several instances, hospitalization. For an industry built on touring, studio sessions, and close physical proximity between collaborators, the spread among working musicians wasn’t surprising — but the speed at which new names kept surfacing was.

The Warning Behind the Numbers

What made Watt’s account resonate wasn’t just the severity of his symptoms — it was his age. At 29, he didn’t fit the profile many younger people assumed made them safe from serious complications. His plea to “stay inside, stay sanitized” was aimed squarely at an audience that, in early March and April 2020, was still treating social distancing as optional.

The mounting list — Watt, Browne, Taylor, Cross, Faithfull, Prine — served as a real-time illustration of how indiscriminately the virus was moving through a tightly networked industry, hitting producers in their 20s and rock legends in their 70s within the same news cycle.

Watt said eleven days after his diagnosis his fevers had eased, though he was still struggling to breathe — a reminder that even a “recovering” case wasn’t a quick turnaround. With John Prine’s condition still being closely watched by fans and the industry at large, the story of musicians and coronavirus was clearly nowhere near finished as April 2020 began.