I Have A Strange Obsession With This Song So I’m Making You Listen To It
Posted on January 16, 2023 Posted by Athena Scalzi 13 Comments
I heard this odd song in an animatic on Tik Tok, and I’ve been listening to it multiple times a day since I first heard it a few months ago.
I have no idea what it’s about or really even from, but here it is:
And here’s the animatic! I had been following this artist’s progression of the animatic for months and this is the final version:
Freaky, right? I’m so curious as to what is going on in it, but I enjoy it even without really understanding it.
Most people I show the song to aren’t as big of a fan of it. My dad says it sounds like community theater singing Bohemian Rhapsody.
What do you think of it? Kind of catchy, no? Strangest song you’ve heard today, perhaps? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
I definitely get the Bohemian Rhapsody influence, but I’m intrigued by the lyrics and the cleverness.
It has a bit of Monty Python vibe to me too.
My kid LOVES this song. And I find it strangely compelling, too. They find a lot of interesting music through animatics.
It definitely is an interesting song. I don’t know if I like it or not. But it is intriguing.
Oh, that’s lovely. And catchy.
I see where the comparisons to Bohemian Rhapsody are coming from – it has similar use of varying (literal) voices, some of the same instruments?, and some phrases / transitions / (musical) voices which echo BR in one way or another. Both have a singer positioned as “young” appealing for mercy. On a first listen, those jumped out at me a fair bit, as did the sense of… bombast? Drama?
But on a deeper listen, the subject matter is different, the musical style is really different, and the musical form is really really really different: BR is a 6-part “mock opera” with radical style variations from segment to segment, The Mind Electric is closer to an A-B-A form (though B and the A-reprise are really short) with an initial A part which builds up a repeated theme with variations/additions each time – way more internal consistency, and more reminiscent of contemporary looped music. (Which it’s also more like in overall style.)
And on a deeper level: Bohemian Rhapsody ends where it began, whereas in the final A verse from The Mind Electric the background cacophony of babbling voices has metaphorphosed into a harmonious choir accompaniment.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a great song, but while I admire the whole and am pleased that it exists, when it comes to actually listening to it there are parts I like and parts I tolerate. I find The Mind Electric more compelling to listen to.
Thanks for the rec!
(PS: The animatic is awesome, though I like the music in the lyrics version more – the animatic has interludes I’m a little less fond of musically, though they work super-well with the visuals.)
Strangely, the first thing that came to mind was Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”.
And that decending lyric in 8ths da-da-da-da-daaa somehow reminds me of hymns.
Am an old fart, but this is really quite interesting. Can I recommend you listen to “The Trial” at the end of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” ?
Well, it’s interesting, all right. The Daily Stoic would probably say it’s about all the stuff in your life you can’t control that seems willing to overwhelm you. It’s up to you to step back, give it the skeptical eye, and take charge of what you can control. The singer is positioned as young and beset, so it reflects the life experience of most of us at some time. As you can tell, I jump immediately to intellectualizing the whole thing. With music that fascinates me, I find learning to perform it myself really helps me to learn what it’s trying to tell me, usually something emotional.
The main theme reminds me of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.
I think the singer is having one of those nightmares where you are aware you are dreaming and think you are waking up several times but each time you are just in a new weird phase of the dream. The part of his mind that knows he is dreaming keeps musing about how his reality is a construct of randomly firing neurons. It’s ambiguous whether he actually wakes up at the end of the song when the light returns.
I get more of a Danny Elfman vibe. It is catchy and fun. The theme seems to relate to mental health, but I can’t see what the goal or statement is.
I get more of a Danny Elfman vibe.
Oh! Yes. And that would also explain why I like it so much.
Apparently there was a version where you heard the whole song backwards before hearing it forwards.
Some of the interpretations are a lot darker than mine. Some think the lighting strikes are electroshock therapy or the electric chair. But the mind is a series of tiny lightning strikes between neurons, so I think the song is just being very dramatic about normal reality.
Didn’t take too long to run it down, the song is part of a suite called “Miracle Musical” written by Joe Hawley, formerly of “Tally Hall”. You might want to sample the whole suite:
https://genius.com/artists/Miracle-musical
https://genius.com/artists/Joe-hawley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_Hall
I played Portal 2 recently so the sentient AI in that game, GlaDOS, came to mind.
I love this song and the animatic. This does sound like Bohemian Rhapsody, but it also reminds me of a play called The Phantom Tollbooth.