#magicunicorn

Helen Parr is hot yeah I said it.

#helenparr #hot #yeahisaidit

Unicorns. Glowing waterfalls. Maybe some flying dolphins. This song is about being at a party and having a cute girl tell you that her name is #Magic #Unicorn.

My appreciation of unicorns began with the 2010 online game Robot Unicorn Attack.

I was really into the idea of meme songs at the time of making “Magic Unicorn”. The goal was to make something that would be memeable. Something totally ridiculous, but catchy. If you want an example of a meme song, you can find playlists of them on YouTube and music streaming services. The whole meme song idea was utilized for a number of other songs on GoBoy 4 and 5, such as “Baby Blue,” “Dragon Fire,” “Coffee Song” and “Dick” (excerpts from post 69).

Most of the time, when a melody idea comes to mind, it takes a few hours to come up with lyrics for that melody. In this case, I knew right away that the chorus melody would repeat the lyrics “magic unicorn.” With that being established, the rest of the lyrics were written within an hour or so.

Regarding the sound effects, I worked as a sound designer for the film industry once upon a time where I learned the utterly worthless skill of creating / manipulating sound effects. That skill was utilized in “Magic Unicorn,” along with songs like “Mermaids,” “Coffee Song,” “Food Song” and “Seattle.”

For GoBoy 4, I tried to choose 2-word combinations that would be memorable, i.e. Hippie Love, Erotic Memories, Magic Unicorn, Dragon Fire, Money Monster.

This is GoBoy’s SUPER minimalistic phase. Some will be turned off by the simplicity of GoBoy 4 songs.

Having so few vocals / lyrics resulted in the song being completed in just a few days. Songs that take that short of an amount of time to complete leave me with little to reflect upon for storytelling, whereas songs that take an entire month to complete give me much to say. Hell, you can binge multiple tv series, get shitfaced multiple times, solve multiple complex problems at work, travel around the country and experience loads of human drama over the course of one month. For “Magic Unicorn,” there’s not much to say (excerpts from post 64).

On average, each GoBoy 3 song took four days to complete, GoBoy 4 songs took six days, GoBoy 5 songs took fourteen days, and GoBoy 6 songs took thirty days.

After dabbling in bubblegum pop for the 2nd half of GoBoy 3, my original plan was to focus on lyrically driven content for GoBoy 4. The release of ”Everything Will Be Okay (Song 69)” changed my mind, as the focus on dark lyrics impacted my mental state for months afterwards. Focusing on the dark elements of your own life for long enough can turn you into a neurotic mess (the original song “Everything Will Be Okay” had a 3rd verse the delved darker). My focus would shift to bubblegum pop from that point forward, which would impact this song. Music would be made for enjoyment and catchiness, not necessarily for conveying a message. I don’t regret this shift in focus… yet (excerpts from post 60).

In April, 2021, almost all of GoBoy 3, 4 and 5‘s songs were restructured to be under 3 minutes (preferably under 2m 30s), including this song. I became okay with releasing songs around the 2 min mark after realizing The Beatles and The Beach Boys had some songs around that length. In an attempt to increase replay value in this streaming era, most of GoBoy’s songs are now purposely around 2m 20s (excerpts from post 37).