By Mel Jenkins
Rock music has spent decades manufacturing heroes. They arrive under spotlights, wrapped in mythology and amplified until ordinary human dimensions disappear. Harry Kappen’s “Good Samaritans” takes the opposite approach. Its heroes are anonymous, unglamorous and probably too busy helping somebody to tell the world how wonderful they are.
The latest single from Kappen’s album After the Crossing is a firm, energetic rocker with a straightforward moral argument. While modern culture rewards appearance, status and constant self-promotion, the people who truly hold society together are often the ones nobody notices.
Kappen builds the verses from the familiar debris of digital life: superheroes, flashy promises, perfect camera angles, filtered pain and “plastic smiles.” In this environment, every private moment becomes public property, sadness is repackaged as inspiration, and a carefully staged sunset is presented as proof of personal fulfillment. “Buy this dream and you’ll be whole,” he sings, exposing the transaction underneath the fantasy.
The song does not condemn technology so much as the vanity it encourages. Social media did not invent self-importance, but it gave self-importance a production department. Kappen’s “golden sunsets” and “sculpted skies” belong to a world where people have become the advertising agencies for their own lives.
Against that noisy pageant stands the good Samaritan. This person stops in the rain, shares another’s pain and acts when everyone else looks around in bewilderment. There is no heroic pose involved. The gesture matters because somebody needs help, not because somebody might be watching.
Kappen’s chorus is joined by Mexican singer Danna Gomez, whose voice broadens the song’s central appeal. Her presence also reflects the geographical and creative transition behind After the Crossing, Kappen’s first album recorded after moving from the Netherlands to Mexico. He performed, sang and produced all ten tracks himself, continuing the independent working method that has defined his recent output.
Kappen identifies David Bowie as an inspiration for “Good Samaritans,” as he did for the preceding single, “Distant Shore.” The connection is not difficult to trace. Bowie understood that public identity is theater. Kappen takes that observation into an age when nearly everyone carries a stage in a pocket and the performance never ends.
But Kappen also brings something of his own history to the subject. A trained music therapist, he spent more than 20 years working in youth care and later lectured in an international master’s program. He knows that empathy is not a slogan. It requires patience, attention and the willingness to remain present when another person’s problems become uncomfortable.
“Simple hearts choose to stay / When the rest walk away,” he sings. That is the whole song in two lines.
“Good Samaritans” has little use for ambiguity, but its bluntness suits the moment. Kappen is not searching for superheroes. He is honoring ordinary people who make the humane choice when it counts—and then leave without waiting for the headline.
