Max's Music Macrology

Hey! Y’all ready for some motherfuckin CHRISTMAS MUSIC? That’s right, we’re approaching the tail end of November so it’s time for the same 40 Christmas songs to be played on every radio station. But, like, let’s talk about that. Yes, it’s repetitive and pretty homogenous, but that’s true of any song that gets a lot of play over the span in a few months. Remember last year when Old Town Road was in the top 40 for seventeen weeks? Christmas music is around for half that long, and there’s so much more of it. Besides, the two largest offenders are major retailers and radio stations, and we live in a world where radio is functionally obsolete and we probably won’t be doing much shopping anyway. In the year of 2020, is Christmas music really that bad? Well, that’s a matter of circumstance or opinion. Yes, we all have much bigger issues, but I’d like to take a deeper dive into the world of Christmas music. Fortunately for me, Wikipedia (something something not proper academic source w/e w/e who cares) has already compiled a table of the 30 most played Christmas songs of 2015.

While that is the chart for just one year, I compared it to listings from a few other years and the songs are largely the same. And also… just look at it. These are 100% the same songs that were played in 2007 and 2010 and 2013 and 2018 and will go on to be played this year… with one anomaly. 2015 is the first year All I Want for Christmas is You made the top 30, despite being written more than two decades previous in 1994.

If you take a look at the years the other songs were released, you may start to understand what took Mariah Carey so long to make the list. Of the 30 songs on the list, only 5 of them were written in the 70s or later, with All I Want for Christmas as the second most recent song on the list (and more importantly, the most recent original composition). A vast majority of the songs were written in the 30s-60s, and have become an integral part of American Christmas because… uh… why, exactly?

Randall Munroe had a hypothesis that he expressed in his popular webcomic XKCD:

He’s likely on to something here. Songs get popular because… that’s what they do. As the baby boomers grew up, they wanted to feel nostalgic with the songs they grew up with, and because there were so many of them, their childhood songs got requested on the radio more and more, and then a new cohort of children grow up with those Christmas songs too. What’s popular goes on to become more popular. This in turn makes it harder for new songs to break in: there’s new Christmas singles every year, and some of them do get radio play, but with this endless wall of “essential Christmas songs” it’s impossible for anything new to break in.

But let’s go back to the original question: so what? There’s traditions that society at large does every holiday season: stores decorate themselves with red and green, cities hang up lights, networks play Christmas specials endlessly. Hearing these same songs is just one of those traditions. The problem is that blindly replaying these same few songs doesn’t leave room for anything better to come through.

For the other ten months of the year, songs compete with each other for radio play and for attention on streaming services. It’s far from an outright meritocracy, but on some level it’s relatively fair: songs trend on the top few spots while they’re popular, then when people get tired of it or start to like something else more, the popular song fades away and the new song gets popular. It has some of the same issues, popular songs receive a burst of popularity by virtue of being popular, but the culture around Christmas music takes it to the extreme: the same few dozen songs get popular every year, and if the label still owns the rights to it then it pumps their pockets full of money and blocks anything new from coming.

This would, theoretically, be a good place to end. I give some generic platitude about not holding on so tight to established traditions and listening to something different this Christmas, link a playlist of winter-sounding Nintendo music, and we move on. But what’s the fun in that? We haven’t even analyzed the content of the songs yet!

When I was originally planning this assignment, I was going to sort each different song into categories like “romance” “winter weather” “commercialism”, etc. Fortunately, Wikipedia did that for me! The largest category is, fittingly, “traditions”. These songs include It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Blue Christmas, and Home for the Holidays. For the most part, this seems like a catch-all category to encompass anything that the other categories don’t include, songs that are about Christmas as a concept. Interestingly enough, these are almost exclusively (with only one exception) from the 50s and 60s, a sort of “second era” of Christmas music. These songs essentially look back at the 30s and 40s songs and lift themes from those to make quintessential Christmas songs.

This category isn’t especially interesting, so let’s move on to “Mythical”, so named because the songs within create or perpetuate the mythology around Christmas- Santa Claus and his flying sleigh delivering presents. These songs are essentially oral traditions passed down through music about “the magic of Christmas”. Remember that phrase for later.

What I’m especially interested in examining are the categories “seasonal” and “celebratory”. Seasonal songs are simple, they’re (usually) upbeat songs written about how nice it is that winter’s here. Most commonly they’re about snow, cold weather, and going inside to get out of the cold weather. If you were in orchestra, band, or choir from fourth grade into middle school, you’re probably familiar with most of these.

Celebratory songs are the most interesting- they’re about celebrating the joy of Christmas, and by nature of becoming part of the Christmas Experience, they have essentially turned Christmas into a celebration of itself. The omnipresence of these songs ensures that every radio station and storefront is full of the celebration of Christmas.

“So what?” you may be thinking. “Is little miss Grinch here gonna complain about that too?” Well, kind of. For the next few months, the joy of Christmas is going to be literally fucking everywhere, and most of you are probably going to be pretty happy about that. I’m pretty happy about that- Christmas takes place during the literal darkest days of the year, just four days after the winter solstice, and I certainly enjoy having all the decorations to light up the darkness. I even enjoy some of the common Christmas songs to an extent, and because they’ve been around forever they can certainly make me feel nostalgic.

But Christmas doesn’t just spread joy, it demands it. If you’re miserable around Christmas, people begin to think there’s something wrong with you. More importantly, when someone’s unhappy and everyone else is joyous, they begin to think there’s something wrong with them. People suffering from depression or seasonal affective disorder, people who are stressed out and beaten down by life, people who have bad memories associated with winter or Christmas aren’t just going to be unhappy during the season, they’re going to feel alienated by the world around them demanding joy. YouTuber Renegade Cut said it best: “nothing is more miserable than being around happy people”.

In fact, he said most things better than I can, so I highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch his video about misery in the time of Christmas to get a sense of what I’m talking about here.

Again, if Christmas and its associated traditions make you happy, that’s good. We can all use some happiness right now, and we should seek it out where we can. But we’re living in the middle of a pandemic, we’re on the tail end of a horrific presidency, those of us demanding social change have been shut down time and time again, many of us may be spending Christmas without family for the first time. If you’re not happy on Christmas, that’s okay too. There’s nothing wrong with you if it doesn’t make you happy. Don’t try to force it. Stay inside and listen to something somber if that’ll help. Sadness is an important emotion to feel sometimes.

And for those of you who want something wintry that doesn’t ask you to celebrate, here’s what I’m listening to as my kickoff to the Holiday season.

Links used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_music#United_States - most played Christmas songs.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tradition.png - xkcd comic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfAJN5vAYmA - Merry Christmas from Renegade Cut

Many of you may be most familiar with Toby Fox as “the guy who made Undertale”, or maybe as “the guy who made Megalovania”. The latter is actually a surprisingly useful way to think of the man, as the journey of Megalovania is wound very closely to the journey of Toby Fox. Just trust me on this part.

In the mid 00’s, Fox was a teenager frequenting Starman.net, a popular forum for the game EarthBound and the other titles in the Mother series, under the username “Radiation”. He created two ROM hacks of the game, releasing the first one in 2006, but his much more successful and influential hack was the EarthBound Halloween Hack, a submission to a 2008 Halloween-themed competition run by Starman.net.

After Fox rose to popularity, he went on to say that he’s not very proud of the hack, and in a deleted 2016 tweet he referred to it as a “bad rom hack with swears”. Having played through it, it’s an apt description- several of the fights are incredibly unbalanced and the villain drops a few slurs- but I don’t believe the hack should be entirely written off either.

In 2008, hacking new music into EarthBound was incredibly difficult, so both composing original music using the EarthBound soundfont and getting it to play in the game was an impressive achievement. While the game certainly has the usual Halloween aesthetic, full of pumpkins and zombies and ghosts, the real horror of the game is psychological, creating a much more fascinating story than a traditional halloween slasher. The final villain is consumed by grief after the death of his son and the estrangement of his wife, becoming a broken man who turns to violence— which are the exact same themes that would later be explored through Asgore when Fox would go on to make Undertale.

Anyway, this was the first and original appearance of Megalovania.

In 2009, Andrew Hussie launched his webcomic Homestuck on mspaintadventures.com, his fourth and final work to be published on the site. It ran until ending 2016 (with Epilogues launching a few years later), and is best known for having possibly the worst fandom in modern history until people started losing interest in 2013. Its second most notable characteristic is how heavily it embraced its online medium, including not just text and images but also gifs, animations with music, and even little interactive games. Over the comic’s seven year run over 500 pieces were written as part of Homestuck’s discography by a variety of artists, and while only a few dozen were included as part of the comic, all of them were made available online through Bandcamp under the Homestuck umbrella.

Toby Fox joined the music team in 2010 with two contributions to the comic’s fourth album, and from there he went on to be their most prolific contributor. From 2010-2016 Homestuck published roughly 90 of Fox’s songs, and he also hosted and managed a contest that led to nearly 60 fan contributed pieces being published. After Homestuck ended, Toby Fox went on to be one of the composers for the various spin off titles: Hiveswap Act One, Hiveswap Friendsim, and Pesterquest, so it seems he has no intent to leave the Homestuck universe anytime soon.

Undertale’s soundtrack was highly praised through its use of leitmotifs (and trust me, I’ll be talking about that plenty later on), but some of his tracks written for Homestuck make even better use of their motifs and reach some fairly complex heights. This video goes through Descend, which ended up during a critical moment during the early comic, and lists the twenty seven songs sampled during.

Of course, these aren’t just empty motifs for fun. The characters introduced thus far all have various themes associated with them, each motif bringing to mind the characters, their factions, and their histories. This is musical storytelling done through completely instrumental songs, and it is fantastically done. Several of his tracks do this, Jade’s medium entrance theme Umbral Ultimatum samples three songs she’d already appeared in, and his final track for the comic’s main run was a glorious melody of several prior battle themes.

Anyway, in 2010 he published the second appearance of MeGaLoVania, which was used during the [S] Wake animation and appeared on a 2011 album.

In 2012, Toby Fox contributed to an EarthBound fan album called “I miss you”, organized by bandcamp user sleepytime Jesse. He contributed four tracks, including Fallen Down (which would later feature in Undertale) and a remix of Megalovania. This isn’t a major milestone in his career like his EarthBound hacks or Homestuck, but I think it says a lot that he loves EarthBound and its community so much that he’d compose songs for a small fan album.

In 2015, Undertale came out and took the internet by storm. Like it or hate it, it was everywhere you looked for a while, from every gaming channel covering it to endless quoting on Reddit or Tumblr. Fox made the majority of the game himself, which of course includes making the soundtrack. There are a total of one hundred and one songs, and it would not surprise me if every single one of them (except Megalovania) was tied to all the others through some web of samples, remixes, and motifs.

Oh yeah, the third version of Megalovania is here, once again featuring as a final battle theme.

Once again, Fox uses motifs expertly as a form of storytelling. Let’s take a look at the track ASGORE, which is entirely created from other songs. The opening is bergentrückung, the intro theme that plays before the battle starts. That flows into Heartache, the battle theme of his ex-wife Toriel, showing that even after she left him, she’s still important enough to be part of his main theme. It also includes the Game Over theme, guiding the player to remember that it was his voice encouraging to continue playing when they failed, urging them forward only to reach him, as well as Undyne’s theme, who looks up to and idolizes him without knowing the truth of who he is.

The entire game is like this. If the player decides to turn evil, they gain a genocide motif that appears in some of the genocide-only bosses. The true final boss is foreshadowed through His Theme during important moments. Undyne and Alphys end up dating in the true ending, and in the genocide run Undyne resurrects herself from the brink of death while Alphys’s melody plays.

Fox’s music makes itself special by being so connected. His songs call back and call forward to other songs, making each of them important in some way or another. The Homestuck and Undertale soundtracks feel holistic, they’re not just “songs that happen to be written by the same guy”, they’re united soundtracks where every song has a greater meaning than just the scene they play over. Hell, even the Homestuck and Undertale soundtracks reference each other, and not just through Megalovania. Another Medium from the latter soundtrack samples Doctor from the former, and the final battle theme Collide samples Death By Glamour.

He’s currently working on his new game Deltarune, the first chapter of which (and its soundtrack) are available for free on PC and various consoles. The music already slaps, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Anyway, the fourth and (as of now final) version of Megalovania was included into none other than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, added into the game alongside a Sans costume for Mii fighters.

This, in my opinion, is nothing short of incredible. Toby Fox went from a Nintendo fan who made a “bad rom hack with swears” for a game he liked, and now his music is appearing in one of the largest gaming franchises of all time. Shoot for the stars, everyone.

I think this is the part where I’m supposed to give a track listing, but come on, you’ve been reading. 90 Homestuck tracks and 101 Undertale tracks, plus everything before and after and in between. Fortunately, his page on the Undertale wiki has his entire discography listed, so I’m going to take the easy way out and link that.

https://undertale.fandom.com/wiki/Toby_Fox#Discography

He has done and has planned a few other projects, but I think the right place to end off is by mentioning his contribution to Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, the Battle Tower theme. This is notable not only for being an awesome song that he composed for a massive franchise, but because it samples one of his early contributions to the Homestuck fandom. I am of course talking about The Baby Is You, an “opera” he wrote as a fan contribution to protest forum rules, which was subsequently banned from even being mentioned on said forum. Not only is this another example of all Fox’s projects fitting in with each other, it’s also a nearly decade-old callback to an obscure edgy joke he made and then hid as an easter egg (or an afikoman for you Jewish folk) in an official Nintendo title.

You’re a musician hoping to make a living off it. You’ve been uploading your songs to YouTube, Spotify, Bandcamp, wherever you can, but you’re having trouble building an audience. It’s been three years of little success, but you can’t imagine doing anything other than music, so you switch gears and become a cover artist.

This is how Jonathan Young came to popularity, and to this day he’s best known for doing covers of just about anything- Disney, top 40, anime, memes. My interview was conducted on Jonathan Young’s community discord server, and as such the questions and answers can be found by joining and then following this link. Not everything I asked will be covered in this piece, so I’d highly recommend reading through his answers.

“I have always hated the concept of having a career doing cover songs because they are much less creatively fulfilling than writing new music, and breed a culture of repetition where no one goes out of their comfort zone to find new music, they just reboot their favorite songs over and over and over. To this day the only reason I make covers at all is because it is one of the only ways to be financially stable in the modern clickbait music industry.”

He’s still been working on his originals, posting them when possible, and he has an album in the works. Despite that, his covers are by far the largest moneymakers. Covers are made with little passion, and which song gets made is determined by request or clickbait potential. Originals are made when there’s time for them.

“I am able to simply hire other musicians to do a lot of my work for me (the instrumental, mixing & mastering) and all I have to do is sing for about an hour each week, film for 10 minutes, and edit for an hour… Sadly, this well oiled production machine makes it very hard for new, small channels run by a single musician or band to ever get a leg up on channels like mine, because they aren't just competing for views with ME personally, they're competing with me and my entire production team that has my money behind them.”

You’ve been making covers for a few years now, and you’ve gotten remarkably successful. You don’t like it, but years of building an audience listening and re-listening to your old library brings in the dough. Your production team gives you more time to work on your personal projects, but you got famous as a cover artist, and for some people that’s your only work that interests them. Still, you’re making enough money to get by, and your originals are finally getting attention.

But you’re part of the exact same machine that made it so hard for you to get a leg up in the first place.

In 2018, Jonathan Young released Bait, a sharp critique of the influencer ecosystem and his role in it. It comes across like a confessional, laying bare how he “clickbaits” his viewers and presents an image crafted to build an audience. The final line of the chorus is “be careful when you choose to take the bait”, a warning to people who want to follow his career path. I’d highly recommend giving the song a listen.

“Everyone, including me, usually only shows the public what we want them to see, which is a sharp contrast to the generally held belief that "content creators" like me are "real" and "transparent" just because we don't answer to a corporation or mainstream record label or whatever. It's the exact opposite.”

You’ve developed a bit of a following, and inevitably several of them will want to be like you- or rather, the image they’ve built up of you. The image you’ve been putting out isn’t you, but it’s what some of your impressionable fans want to become. It’s not your fault. You’re a musician doing what it takes to make money. Our society elevates artists, puts them on a pedestal, it’s only natural people would want to be like you without knowing what “like you” actually means.

“Some of the covers I've performed that people say are the most emotional are also the covers that I hated the most and basically just put on an act for, but because I've done this for a long time people can't tell the difference… If it is popular to write songs about depression, there is nothing stopping a good liar from writing a well-put-together song about depression… A minor chord will always sound sad, no matter who is playing it, or what they are thinking when they play it.”

Jonathan went out of his way to stress that musicians aren’t dissimilar to people who make burgers. They combine basic elements to craft something specifically meant to be appealing. Music theory is a science, and anyone who has made music for 5 years can substitute theory for honesty. As such, some songs can feel like lying, even manipulation. The listeners aren’t empathizing with your emotion, they’re feeling the way you told them to feel.

“My answer on a small scale is to encourage my fans to stop idolizing and see me as a regular dude. If my covers inspire someone, that's fine, but they need to stop and consider that I probably made that cover in about 2 hours of work, and chances are I don't even like the song. That makes me feel like a con artist, and I think everyone should know that if I can inspire you without being inspired myself, so can a greedy corporation. It's a lot of food for thought.”

Congratulations: you’ve made it. You’re coasting on passive income from your years of music that you feel no passion towards. You have time for passion projects now, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to survive off them anytime soon, or that your following will be interesting. You’ve cracked your way into the independent music industry and become part of the same structures that made it so difficult in the first place. The image people have of you is a mere distortion of your real self, and you can’t do anything about people idolizing you no matter how much you hate it.

Roundabout is a progressive rock track by the English rock band Yes. Released in 1971 for their album “Fragile”, and has since become one of their most popular and most recognized songs. It’s a lengthy track featuring poetic lyrics and long solo sections, but it’s most distinct feature may be it’s intro. Roundabout starts with an extended acoustic guitar riff consisting of incredibly sparse notes, before reaching a drop that completely switches the mood of a song. Give it a listen:

Hirohiko Araki, creator of the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure series, cited Roundabout as one of his inspirations for the series, and when the manga finally received an anime adaptation in 2012 they used Roundabout as the ending theme for the first season. As episodes of the manga and the anime were serialized weekly, they relied fairly often on cliffhangers to keep the audience engaged, often ending at a tension point to keep people coming back for next week. At the end of most episodes, the anime would play a few seconds of the song before the drop, then it would freeze-frame on a “to be continued” screen before segueing into the end credits.

(Roundabout was no longer playing at this point in the anime, but you get the idea)

It took a few years, but soon enough the internet realized “hey, this is a joke we can drive into the ground!” A new video meme known as “the Roundabout meme” or “the to be continued meme” began circulating in 2016, finding especially strong success on vine. The guidelines for the meme are simple: the video opens with a few seconds of what appear to be ordinary video, with the acoustic opening playing over it. There’s no rule as to how long this section has to be, but it generally wasn’t longer than a few seconds to stop the viewer from getting bored, and due to length restrictions on Vine it tended to only be 3-4 seconds. Then, something terrible has to happen right as the drop hits. It can be anything from something falling over to footage of an international catastrophe, but we never actually see it happen- the video freeze-frames and we hang on a “to be continued” screen as the drop starts to play. Below is a brief compilation to illustrate the meme.

CONTENT WARNING: the video contains footage of people (and 1 animal) that may have preceded serious injury. While no actual harm is shown, the video may be stressful or distressing to watch.

So, why Roundabout? Part of it is because of the popularity of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and how meme-able everything in the franchise is, but the Roundabout meme was enjoyed and eventually created by people who had never even heard of the series. Besides, plenty of other shows have “to be continued” moments and theme songs that could be incorporated into a similar meme. I believe it’s the structure of Roundabout that lead to its memetic evolution.

The opening to Roundabout is, for lack of a better term, boring. I don’t mean that in the “ugh, I’m going to skip this part” sense, because it’s boring-ness is an important contrast to the rest of the song (and the riff’s incorporation later on is wonderful), but it’s an acoustic guitar not doing anything special accompanied by a few trippy noises. It’s perfectly unassuming and a perfect match for the first half of the meme, which is a scene of ordinary life where nothing special happens.

And then the drop comes. Roundabout doesn’t ease you into it, one moment you’re listening to a slow guitar and the next you hear actual chords and a bangin bassline. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a meme about sudden catastrophe. Everything’s fine, and then suddenly it’s high-octane chaos.

What, then, could replace Roundabout? Meme formats get tired, but the ideas they wish to express are always there. People eventually got tired of using Roundabout for their memes, but no one wanted to stop making light of sudden injury or catastrophe. So Roundabout went the same way as any tired old meme: it picked up a new skin.

In Ghana, there’s a tradition where after someone’s passing, their family can hire pallbearers to dance while carrying the departed’s coffin. While this may seem macabre to those of us raised in the west, in Ghana it’s viewed as a way to celebrate the person’s life. As you can see in the video linked below, the dances are quite impressive and fun to watch. 

The song playing over the video is Astronomia by Tony Igy and Vicetone, and this is Roundabout’s spiritual successor. This new format, known as “the coffin dance meme”, ominously rose to popularity in March of this year. While Roundabout, in my opinion, is a more fun format, the coffin dance is easier to make and much funnier on first viewing. The rules are simple: include a clip of something dangerous about to happen to someone, then before we see any consequence, cut away to the dancing pallbearers carrying a coffin while Astronomia plays. The implication being, of course, that the person featured in the meme is in the coffin.

Roundabout and the coffin dance do vary in one significant way, though. Roundabout is at least tangentially empathetic- even if the meme is made to make light of a potential tragedy, the song matches the mood of the scene, recognizes the chaos that may be unfolding behind the “to be continued” filter. Astronomia, meanwhile, sees the tragedy and laughs at it. The dancing pallbearers may be there to celebrate life in Ghana, but this is a distinctly western meme. We live in the culture that gave us Fortnite, where players dance over their enemies’ corpses, and our preconceptions tell us that people dancing with a coffin are making fun of whoever’s inside.

(for those of you who were worried, apparently he had a parachute)

So why Astronomia? At first glance, it seems like the answer might just be “because that’s the song the first guy put in the video”. The rhythm is just right, and it looks like the dancers are in time with the song when synced up properly. But just like with Roundabout, there’s plenty of other songs that would’ve fit just as well. Astronomia has a unique sound profile, making a very clear electronic feel without that sound being overbearing. That leads to dissonance that fits the meme really well- in the western world, EDM is just as out of place at a funeral as dancing pallbearers.

More importantly, though, I think it’s the mood of Astronomia that really cemented it as the successor to Roundabout. It’s an upbeat song, but there’s a faint hint of sadness clinging to it, like water clings to leaves after a storm. Both memes are products of their respective times- in 2016, change was sudden and unexpected. Out of nowhere, the entire world was in upheaval and no one knew what to do about it. Four years later, we’re all jaded and over it. Tragedy and misfortune are expected at this point, the only thing we can do now is make a mockery out of it and find our happiness where we can.

Links used:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuGAWR2eRyQ - Roundabout by Yes

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/977/284/b6e.jpg - Angry Jotaro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsiNzg6-_MY - Roundabout meme compilation

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/363/817/9e7.jpg - scooby doo meme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9V78UbdzWI - “official” dancing pallbearers + Astronomia video

Of the various winter holidays, Christmas completely dominates. The radio is filled with Christmas music, every network ever has a 12 days of Christmas marathon, Hallmark and Lifetime shit out another few dozen Christmas romcoms, and stores spend a solid month and a half decked out in red and green. While I certainly enjoy the Christmas spirit, it makes the literally darkest days of the year feel a whole lot brighter, it’s a little tedious to see the gentiles completely dominate the season. Despite Adam Sandler’s best efforts, there is next to no good Hanukkah content.

But for the Spring holidays? I guess they put all their effort into Christmas movies, because Easter doesn’t have shit. Like, what, are you gonna sit around and watch Hop?? Gonna watch Passion of the Christ with the grandkids after Easter brunch? Nah, THE springtime holiday movie belongs to Passover and Prince of Egypt, the family funtime singalong classic about how God unleashed 10 Plagues on a bunch of slaveowners.

Every song in Prince of Egypt slaps. The opening is hard-hitting and emotional, All I Ever Wanted is a fantastic inversion of the traditional “Disney Princess” song, Playing With the Big Boys might be my favorite villains song ever, The Plagues is low and menacing, and the closing song is triumphant and joyous and almost makes you forget the protagonists are about to wander in the desert for 40 years. The topic of today’s post is Through Heaven’s Eyes, which I wouldn’t say is my favorite song on the playlist but it never fails to make me smile.

The song starts with a sort of desert aesthetic (sound-aesthetic?), which makes sense because the song takes place in the desert. It kicks off with a light percussion, a soft melody, then joined by a tambourine rhythm and woodwind melody that sounds like it doesn’t have a care in the world. It’s not a quick or bombastic opening, it’s the sound of waking up on vacation with the sun rising out the window. You can go back to sleep if you want, but you don’t really want to, y’know? It’s good that the option’s there and all, but you’d much rather just go out on the patio with a sweet drink and watch the sun come up.

The verses are delivered by a male soloist, a soft but confident baritone who sounds like you’d imagine the old retired dudes who play chess at the park in stock photos. I’ve never met someone who does that in real life, but if they are out there this is what they probably sound like when you sit down next to them and offer life advice. Because that’s what he’s doing. He’s not some grumpy old dude telling you to “get some perspective”, he’s a wise old grandpa teaching you how to do it. The instruments are subdued behind his voice, but they don’t completely fall to the background. They dance behind him, playing little riffs to bolster his voice, and after his first stanza the woodwind pipes up in agreement. A happy little “doo doo doo doo doo doo doo!” as if his sage advice has enriched their life.

The instrumentation builds through the next verse, blooming like one of those time lapses of a flower. It’s exciting, but not like rollercoaster exciting, it’s like going to the airport to meet an old friend exciting. The singer’s voice remains mostly steady, but you can tell he’s excited too. This is the excitement of giving, the feeling when you give a friend a birthday present and they’re about to open it. There’s no nerves, no excess energy, just the anticipation that fills you right before experiencing joy.

And then the joy happens. The chorus is a basic melody sung by the ensemble, and there’s no words to it. It’s a few syllables sung in a melody so simple that a four year old can do it. And that’s the point. Everyone is invited to join in, to hold hands and dance around in a circle. You don’t need to know how to sing, you don’t need to be remotely coordinated. You just have to throw yourself into the song and allow it to welcome you.

The instrumentals don’t hold back anymore. How could they? This kind of joy is contagious, when the ensemble gets to sing and dance around you bet that the instruments are gonna follow. Still, it never overwhelms- they’re bright and exuberant, but coordinated and don’t try to play over each other. The singer sounds more animated now, so full of energy that you can picture him moving around like an actor in a stage play. Just before the bridge, it all comes together in a crescendo that feels like the hug you’re gonna give all your friends after we all get the covid vaccine. Gonna run right up to them and just jump at them, squeeze the homies real tight and just stand there with each other for a moment because we’re all touch starved. But we can’t do that yet, so the song will have to be good enough.

The bridge has a nice, firm percussion. Oh yeah. That’s the stuff. Then the violin kicks in a bit and OH yeah, that’s the stuff.

The next chorus starts out slower, not slow, but you can tell they’re holding back a bit. It’s for good reason, though, because when they go all out it’s even more exciting. It’s like a party, but not your everyday frat party where people are either high or pretending to have fun, an honest to god party where all your friends are there and you don’t have to put a face on to fit in. Dance as badly as you want, we’re all friends here, you’ll fit right in.

The last verse slows down a bit for real this time, like flowers blowing in the evening wind. The ensemble harmonizes behind the singer for a transcendental feeling of togetherness, then joins in for the last couple lines. They’re triumphant, not a competitive triumph, but the feeling you get when everyone comes together and pitches in to make a success. The last line is booming, a sustained final note as the instruments play the song’s motif and close out the song. The resolution is like crashing onto your mattress after a busy day, letting any tiredness wash off and make room for good memories.

I think this is where I give some big thoughtful conclusion about the meaning of the song and all that. That’s the song’s job though, go listen to it. And watch Prince of Egypt. And here’s a fun cover of the song too.

Links used:

Life is fucking unfair. When injustice is committed, whether it’s against you, a friend, or even someone you don’t know, it’s a rational response to get angry. For a while, it can even feel good to hold on to the anger, curse out whatever is causing you pain. But people don’t act properly when they’re angry, and while it’s a natural way to feel, it’s helpful to release it from our bodies and minds so we can move on to something more constructive.

For a long time, I wondered whether it’s best to listen to angry music while angry or listen to calming music while angry. On the one hand, while angry music is best enjoyed while angry, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to calm someone down. On the other hand, when I’m pissed off the last thing I want to do is listen to something calm and soothing, and it’s unlikely to improve my mood. Eventually, I figured out that the solution is to start with something loud and angry, then slowly transition into calmer songs once it starts to get out of my system. So today, I present to you:

Linkin Park Songs for When you Want to Punch Something and Then Want to not Want to Punch Something

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7ziRTW8efxxIBlVwSv1Wjr

Disclaimer: while punching things when angry may feel good, it’s ultimately a harmful practice that trains your brain and body to want to hit things in order to let off anger. Less harmful forms of catharsis, like going for a brisk walk while listening to loud music, are much healthier ways to cool off.

Something in the air's not right today

I chose Papercut to be my first choice here because honestly, that synth riff is perfect. The beginning of the playlist is supposed to match the emotions of an angry listener, and that too-fast, vaguely alarm-sounding synthesizer that never seems to resolve and just keeps going creates the perfect feeling of tension that comes when something goes wrong and you cannot fix it, but you need to. Fast.

You’re gonna listen to me like it or not

Faint was originally going to be the first song on the playlist- I just love those strings giving way to the guitar drop- but Papercut ultimately won out. Faint is one of those songs that says what you want to say, but can’t bring yourself to say it. It demands respect, and for a moment it lets you imagine that you can demand respect too. The rap bit lasts for just the right amount of time before giving way to the angry screaming. When combined with Papercut, I think the shouting kicks in just when the listener wants it to. Or at least, when I want it to, anyway. And since it’s my playlist, isn’t that what really matters?

Digging deeper just to throw it away

I actually didn’t hear Bleed it Out until today, when I was finding songs for the playlist, and it’s kinda perfect? It starts out upbeat, but with the drumbeats just a little too hard. The energy keeps the blood flowing, and even though it doesn’t get nearly as angry as Faint does, the instrumental perfectly embraces the listener’s anger. The lyrics are fucking intense too, and their endless repetition empathizes with the way intrusive thoughts can loop around a listener’s head.

(Some pretty intense guitar)

I’m gonna be honest. I don’t really care much for the lyrics in Hit the Floor. That doesn’t mean they’re bad, I just don’t find them very interesting. But that dark, distorted guitar and all the shouting makes it a perfect song to walk around town in the middle of the night brooding.

I’m beginning to think I’ve been deceived

No More Sorrow is another new one to me, but the first minute those guitars hit me, I knew it was going on the playlist. Every line in the song is dripping with deceit, wrought in the throes of bitterness before leaving someone who hurt you. It has the same energy as Faint, vocalizing everything you’re too civil to scream at another person, this time cloaked with a guitar evoking the rhythm of a palpitating heart.

GO AWAY!!

A Place for my Head is my go-to when the “I’m so angry I can’t even talk” kicks in. It starts out with a veneer of poetry, wrapping its rage in metaphors without abandoning the emotion within. The harmful presence they wish to escape is nebulous enough to relate to but specific enough that you can latch on to how harmful it is. Then comes the part where you get pushed too far, and all the artsiness falls away for beautiful, terrible rage. I think most of us have someone that’s just so awful to be around that all we want to do is scream “go away” as loud as the song does. This is the climax of the playlist, the vocal chord-wrenching peak of wishing we could scream.

Fuck it, are you listening??

Blackout is essentially a microcosm of the playlist, and what I structured the playlist to emulate. The first third of the song drips with the same feelings of betrayal the rest of the songs steep themselves in, delivering its emotion on bars punctuated by shouting. Unlike the other songs, though, the instrumental is dark and slow, and you slowly realize that all the streaming and outrage is pointless. Then… it breaks. The middle section of the song is syllables looping and repeating and distorting over a very strange drop, disorienting and stressing until even that falls away. The final part of the song is when the anger all falls away. The distortion bit flushed everything out, and it’s calm now. Bright, electronic instrumental backs calming verses that can carry you up to the sky.

(Bright distorted music noises)

The Requiem is a strange entry, I’ll admit, and I wanted it as a bit of a palette cleanser after Blackout. Most of it is an instrumental punctuated with strange noises, clearing the mind and bringing you back to the present.

I’m tired of being what you want me to be

Numb/Encore, for something familiar after the strangeness of The Requiem. I’ve always thought of Numb as a parallel to A Place for my Head. A Place for my Head is covered with an angry haze and forged in the fires of anger, while Numb is more detached. Not in a bad way, it’s just that the singer is able to be more cognizant of the situation, and the song is a lot more sober as a result. The production is also why I wanted to include it in the post-Blackout section, this mix is filled with bright, almost hopeful little piano melodies throughout to help you stay calm now that we’re putting the anger behind us.

So I’m breaking the habit

Breaking the Habit was really the only song that made sense to put here. It’s not quite as calm as Numb/Encore, but thematically it’s the perfect closer for this. It’s about putting bad habits behind you, no longer allowing yourself to fall into harmful patterns. It doesn’t have the answers, it doesn’t know the right way forward, but the song knows it’s making the right choice, and that rubs off on the listener. You, too, can break habits that end in or come from anger. You can develop healthier patterns. You can move on from whatever it is that led you to listen to this playlist.

https://open.spotify.com/album/77GfuN14n99dTuTAvgmCQ8

Accessibility is an often unconsidered factor when it comes to media. While the specific color of objects on a screen may seem trivial to someone with typical sight, small changes can go a long way to making certain things more clear. The ability to remap buttons on a controller can help people with limited mobility in their hands play games, and specific fonts are more readable to people with dyslexia. These have become more common in recent years as people begin talking more about accessibility, and games are even being made with certain phobias in mind. Now I’m going to turn my attention to hearing loss, because in case the title didn’t give it away, that’s what this post is about. Hearing loss isn’t an affliction unique to the elderly- per the National Institutes of Health, 15% of adults report difficulty hearing, 18% of adults who have worked long-term in a loud environment (eg construction) report difficulty hearing voices, and 13% of people 12 or older have some form of hearing loss detectable through standard hearing examinations. This gets worse with age- 25% of people in the 65-74 age bracket have disabling hearing loss, which increases to half of the population in the 75+ bracket. None of this even includes auditory processing disorders, which can also have a severe impact on one’s ability to process and interpret language, even if they’re capable of hearing. In movies, games, and television, this is aided well enough by the option to include subtitles. If someone has difficulty hearing the dialogue, they can read along with the show. When it comes to a live performance, though, this isn’t exactly an option. Watching musical theatre is an experience all on its own, a concert and a play rolled into one, and having issues hearing the actors can severely impede one’s enjoyment. Enter the Ziegfield theater, who put on a production of Newsies performed entirely in both spoken English and ASL. The show featured deaf actors, a professor of ASL, and was choreographed by the child of two deaf parents who grew up with ASL as his first language, so it’s clear to me they were committed to doing the show properly. The Ziegfield theater is based on Utah, but they sold online “tickets” to watch performances of the show, so my friend Ana and I were able to watch the show from the safety of our own houses-- which turned out to be especially useful, as the show ran right into the start of quarantine.

I was lucky enough to see Newsies on Broadway before, and it’s an absolutely fantastic show with some killer music. I’m not so interested in talking about the plot itself here because my real focus is on the ASL aspect, but I’d highly recommend the show’s soundtrack embedded in the head of the article. Unfortunately I was unable to find the Ziegfield theater cast’s performance, so you’ll have to “settle” for the original Broadway cast.

Anyway, onto the sign language aspect… it was incredible. I can’t read ASL myself, but from a purely aesthetic standpoint it was incredible to watch. As choreographer Bryan Andrews discovered, “ASL is just natural choreography… it sticks in dancers’ brains easier than you would think.” The dances were properly tweaked so the singers would always be facing the audience as to not hide their hands, and no sign ever looked awkward or out of place in a dance number. I would absolutely love to see other shows performed the same way.

Even the decision to stream the show fits into the accessibility angle because it’s easier to look across a computer monitor than a whole stage. If two characters are speaking to each other across the stage and you need to look at their hands to understand them, someone in person would have to turn their neck back and forth between them. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but being able to flick your eyes back and forth across the screen makes it easier to watch both sides of the conversation at once.

Finally, I want to talk about the choice to perform Newsies as their ASL show. Newsies is an inclusive show- the protagonists need the power of everyone they can reach to aid their strike, so their voices need to reach as far as they possibly can. By incorporating sign language into the show, the cast is symbolically including people with hearing difficulties into a story they may not have been able to experience.

Citations:

https://twitter.com/frogjail/status/689494372069421056 - Twitter user on Undertale’s colorblindness update

https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide - British dyslexia association

https://ssundiall.tumblr.com/post/625888194066513920/neurotypicalablebodied-ppl-can-reblog-but-if-you - tumblr user on accessibility options

https://sickcritic.com/2020/07/10/groundeds-arachnophobia-mode-accessibility-options-me/ - arachnophobia accessibility in games

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing - National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/auditory-processing-disorder/ - national health service on auditory processing disorders

Halfway through the 90s, everything changed. The PlayStation came out in 94, allowing games with 3D graphics and high-fidelity (for the time, that is) audio. Big Red came hopping onto the scene with Super Mario 64 in 96, and Sonic Adventure came onto the scene at the very end of 98. As a latecomer to the 3D party, arriving over 2 years after Mario had such a successful romp, they needed something special. They needed…

Children’s media! I’m of the opinion that there are two main categories that children’s media can fall into: there’s media that is specifically made for children, like Blue’s Clues or Peppa Pig or those licensed Sesame Street games. Then there’s kid-friendly media that, while made for and marketed towards children, can still appeal to adults. This would be most Pixar movies, shows like Phineas and Ferb, and the object of today’s article, the Sonic franchise.

While there’s some pretty huge differences between children’s media and kid-friendly media, one thing they both have in common is the goal of teaching children a moral lesson. With varying degrees of success. This can be something simple like “stealing is bad”, but oftentimes there’s some greater nuance, like how the protagonist of Inside Out learns to value sadness and other “negative” emotions. But when working with hardware that has some intense limitations, like the NES or Sega Genesis, telling a complex story isn’t easy, which is why Save the Princess plots (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, the opening to Final Fantasy) were so common: it allowed for a moral hero without requiring any deeper discussion. Sonic the Hedgehog went with a bit more of an environmentalist message- saving animals from an evil scientist- which was easy enough to portray in only 16 bits.

Halfway through the 90s, everything changed. The PlayStation came out in 94, allowing games with 3D graphics and high-fidelity (for the time, that is) audio. Big Red came hopping onto the scene with Super Mario 64 in 96, and Sonic Adventure came onto the scene at the very end of 98. As a latecomer to the 3D party, arriving over 2 years after Mario had such a successful romp, they needed something special. They needed…

I’m going to review this album out of order. This is a “Best of” album, so rather than being a picture of the band’s musical vision at any given time, it contains some of their best work from over a decade-long span. What I’m especially interested in is how the music interacts with its respective game and how it evolves with the franchise, so let’s take a look at song #15 first.

Open Your Heart kicks off Sonic Adventure with a bang. It’s the first thing you hear when you boot the game up and it accompanies the final battle. Well, most of it, anyway- part 1 of the battle gets Open Your Heart and part 2 gets generic “tense orchestral music”, which is a flat-out awful decision, but I digress. Tonally, it’s perfect- it starts out tense, preparing you for the fight ahead, and then the guitars kick in to pull you forward. But more importantly… this is why I brought up the moral conflict earlier. The story is simple, so the game leans on the song to deliver its message.

Much of the lyrics are as relevant today as they probably were for most of human history: the quieter intro bit describes various catastrophes, and describes the fear and confusion that follows (much like the one we’ve been living in for the past few months). The song’s chorus is built around a dialectic: Can’t hold on much longer/but I will never let go, but then ends with Open your heart, it’s gonna be alright. Together, these components combine the fear of catastrophe with the innate desire to make things better. It instills the idea that it’s okay to have conflicting feelings about a course of action, then promises that your heart will make the right choice.

Live and Learn is the main theme of the direct sequel, Sonic Adventure 2, and fills the same roles as Open Your Heart. The opening riff plays when the game is launched, the full song plays over the final battle, and it delivers the moral lesson of the game. If Open Your Heart introduces a lesson about conflict, then Live and Learn teaches you what to do when you’ve made the wrong choice. What happens if you trust the wrong people, stay when you should’ve run or run when you should’ve stayed, let something important fall into the wrong hands?

The very title of the song hints at its message- you learn from your mistakes and do better- but to me the line that really hits comes in the second verse. But you can’t save your sorrows/you’ve paid in trade. It recontextualizes all the regret someone feels from a mistake as a sort of currency: it’s not to be saved, kept in your mind and dwelled on- you’ve exchanged it, traded it for valuable life experience. If you focus on the mistake instead of the lesson, you’ll never grow, and it’ll all have been a waste. Not only is it a natural progression from the last song, it’s an absolute banger of a track.

Next up is Sonic Heroes, the intro track to… Sonic Heroes. That won’t be confusing. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one, it’s not the big moral apex of the game and it’s much more of a title theme than the song the game wants you to walk away from. It’s goofy as hell to listen to, but it always puts a smile on my face.

What I’m Made of is the final battle theme to Sonic Heroes and is, in my opinion, the finale of the Open Your Heart trilogy. Looking at the three songs is a sort of rudimentary 3-act structure: you have the introduction and first conflict, the dark part at the end of act 2, and the triumphant closer. The protagonist takes the lesson they learned through the story and uses it to defeat their opponent. What I have in my two hands is enough to set me free. Use the lessons you’ve learned through hardship to better yourself. The songs form a very nice trilogy when viewed like this that parallels the games quite nicely, and I’m confused as to why they’re all out of order on the album.

That finishes off the Adventure and Heroes saga, and now onto… Shadow the Hedgehog… god. I Am… All of Me is the opening track to the game and also the first song on the album, and it’s so goofy. It tries to be all dark and intimidating because Shadow is the dark and edgy character, who has guns and says “damn” because he has a tragic backstory, and the character isn’t edgy because he’s a cartoon hedgehog and and the song isn’t edgy because it’s a song about a cartoon hedgehog.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad, mind you. I enjoy it, and in a way it’s a perfect fit for the game. It’s like a kid wearing a vampire costume on halloween: they can try to scare you all they want, but the worst they can do is make you smile.

All Hail Shadow is the next Shadow the Hedgehog piece. This one was originally by a group called Magna-Fi, and was covered by Crush 40 for use in later games when the band broke up. Shadow the Hedgehog features multiple paths and multiple endings, and this is the “true hero” ending when the player makes all the heroic choices. This song does a good job painting Shadow as Sonic’s foil: both of them are heroes from this point forward, but while Sonic is more of a classical hero, Shadow is an anti-hero. Somewhere in chaos we all find ourselves/this destruction is the only tale we tell. The game features Shadow trying to recover his memories and find his true self, figure out who he really is, and this is the song that has him rediscover himself as a hero.

Finally, Never Turn Back is the true ending theme for the game, and the last Shadow the Hedgehog song in the album. This is the “moral lesson” song I’ve been on about so much, and it’s a damn good one. It starts with a slow cover that samples I am… All of Me, then it gets a powerful kick that rings in the rest of the song. The message in the song is similar to Live and Learn about not repeating mistakes, but Never Turn Back gives a sense of a much more arduous period in one’s life. If Live and Learn is about recovering from a mistake, Never Turn Back is about recovering from a long series of them. It’s been a long rough road but I’m finally here/Move an inch forward, feels like a year. It’s very much about cutting yourself free of a bad period in your life and how difficult it can be to even stay put, but the positive vibe of the song reminds us to celebrate the small victories. It’s a bit more mature of a message for a game that… at least tried to be more mature.

I haven’t talked a whole lot about how the music interacts with the events of the game partially because this is a music review, but partially because it’s gone perfectly hand and hand with the music so far. There hasn’t been much dissonance between “rock music that gives life advice” and “young-ish hedgehog learning how to live life”. That’s about to change, though, because it’s time for Sonic 06. At the end of Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic declared that he was no one special, “just a guy who loves adventure”. This is when that ceased to be true.

The first three songs we discussed weren’t about Sonic. The singer was a nameless narrator occasionally fighting a nameless opponent. They were relevant to the series, but they could be about anyone. That’s what made them so versatile. His World is the main theme of Sonic 06, and where the other 2 versions of the song existed more to hype up Sonic as a character, the Crush 40 cover was more about the events of the game. As a song, it’s pretty good: it’s a more intense version of the original song, and it’s got a slower but steadier pace to it. But here’s what sets it apart from the other main themes: it’s about Sonic. It’s not a lesson about facing conflict and overcoming adversity wrapped up in an upbeat rock song, it’s about the events of the game and how awesome Sonic is. He isn’t the everyman anymore, he’s an important figure, a chosen one to save the world from this point forward. The music reflects that.

To really drive home this new direction they were going, Sega released two games for the Wii called “Sonic Storybook” games, where Sonic would become the main character of two classic stories: Arabian Nights and the legend of King Arthur. They’re both terrible in… just about every aspect, but the first entry Sonic and the Secret Rings is godawful. The main theme Seven Rings in Hand wasn’t written or originally performed by Crush 40, but for some reason they decided to cover it for their album, so I have to talk about it: it’s trash. It’s a bunch of empty lyrics about nothing with some pretty subpar mixing.

While Sonic and the Black Knight isn’t much better, it at least has a killer main theme. Knight of the Wind as a song is pretty badass, but it suffers the same issues as His World. There’s no more important meaning, it’s just about Sonic being a knight and saving people. It has a few familiar “never give up” themes, but it doesn’t do anything as well as Open Your Heart or Live and Learn. It falls into the Sonic Heroes mold where it’s fun to listen to and less fun to really take apart and analyze. The ending theme (which strangely precedes Knight of the Wind) Live Life samples Knight of the Wind, but that’s pretty much the coolest thing it does. It’s slow and pensive, making a sense of faux-thoughtfulness to cover mostly shallow lyrics.

With Me (Massive Power Mix) is the last Sonic and the Black Knight theme here, and was originally written by Crush 40 and performed by singers from the band “All Ends”. The album features a version performed by the band itself, and the song is unique in that it’s sung from the POV of the game’s villain. As a result, it features a look into a character who walked a “dark path”, weighed down by the mistakes they made. Don’t blame [me] for what I have become. It’s an ideological clash against the values in the other songs, arguing that anyone can be tempted to become evil. It’s deeper than anything in the game, but it’s shockingly good considering its source material.

That does it for the main series themes, but there’s a few others on here- a couple tracks for the racing games, an oddly placed cover of Fire Woman, and a too-slow ballad-sounding original song called Is It You. However, I think I’ve gone on long enough, and I’ve discussed everything I wanted to: how the songs showcased on this album elevate the messages given in the games.

Ultimately, all these songs are mirrors of the game they’re in, for better or worse. For that, I have to applaud the band’s versatility- even if most of the songs are the same genre, they cover a wide range of moods and messages depending on what the game demands. They can write a kick-ass guide to getting over failure or a fun little romp to introduce a game. Even divorced from their source material, many of the songs stand well on their own, and there’s a very good reason why fans of the franchise want Crush 40 to return for future installments.

Videos cited:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJYxYzxFyZw Peppa Pig - Caddicarus (warning: weird shit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JWYDUYqhlc&list=PL5F29F0909BF08B56&index=15 - Best of Crush 40 Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voI-9TdS0Jw - Seven Rings in Hand (Crush 40 Ver)

Right before your eyes Watch us multiply Come to claim our rights It’s time

Whenever there’s a push towards societal progression, there’s inevitably a push against it from The Privileged. When we take to the streets to ask “hey, can we have cops kill less black people?”, there’s another faction that does everything in their power to pretend it isn’t an issue. When we ask for universal healthcare like every other industrialized country, conservatives decide it’s better to let poor people die than pay for their treatment. If LGBTQ+ people simply exist, the right finds any opportunity to kick us down. When you have all the privilege in the world, equality feels like oppression. No rights have ever been gained through civility.

For lack of any good segue, let’s talk about Persona 5: I’ve never played it. I’m a college student, does it look like I have a hundred hours to do something fun? What I have done is listen to the soundtrack. It slaps. And by far my favorite song is Life Will Change, composed by Shoji Meguro and sung by Lyn Inaizumi. I don’t know enough to talk about the song in the context of the game, but it stands well enough on its own to be worth talking about.

And our voices ring out, yeah

A protest is about being heard. You go into the streets and combine your voices into one and you don’t stop until people can’t ignore you. You find solidarity with your compatriots and your voices, and the power comes from volume. Life Will Change delivers this image uniquely well, by having lyrics from the perspective of a single speaker and a group of speakers:

I’m not a Phantom I’m in your face and I’m here to see it through

As our power grows Tryin' to stop us shows Might as well go try and Stop time

By switching viewpoints, Life Will Change delivers the perspective of both an individual hungering for change and the group that allows them to achieve it. This also gives an interesting look into crowd psychology, whether intentional or not. People think differently within a group, more likely to follow the crowd and make decisions they normally wouldn’t, good or bad. By starting with an “I” viewpoint and moving to a “we” viewpoint, Life Will Change encompasses the shift that joining a protest creates in people.

I'm just as real as I'm just as dangerous

Protests are fundamentally against something. Against the police, the military, the upper class. We protest because someone is doing something immoral and we want 1) someone to know about it and 2) to make it stop. It’s pointed, directed, and the song gives this impression well. Every single verse is directed towards an unfriendly target, promising that the protestors will get their way and their foe will be defeated.

And you'll know that we're out there Swatting lies in the making Your empire for the taking Can't hold on or life won't change

Most importantly, Life Will Change promises hope. Protests happen because something in the world is broken, but they also happen because everyone who shows up believes it can be changed. The song isn’t just about taking action, it’s about taking action and fixing things. Life will change if you keep fighting and keep making noise. It’s full of volume, unity, and hope, and that’s everything I want in a song that tells me to keep fighting.

Sources:

“How to Pretend Systemic Racism Doesn’t Exist”, Some More News, youtube.com

“Debunking Trump on LGBT Rights”, Renegade Cut, youtube.com

“Stephen Reicher on Crowd Psychology”, socialsciencespace

Music, in order:

Life Will Change from the Persona 5 soundtrack

Life Will Change cover by RichaadEB and Caleb Hyles

Life Will Change cover by Little V Mills

Life Will Change instrumental cover by FamilyJules

Life Will Change cover by Johnny Atma ft Sapphire & Sax Dragon