I'm still not over the fact that Sega handed the responsibility of "racing theme for Sonic (the character)" over to Kairiki Bear of all people. Love his music, but like. what was the thought process there.
Sonic is their cheerful, confident mascot, representative of freedom and raw swag, the cool kid around the block that everyone in their audience wants to be like. He's unflappable, determined, cheeky, and this game in particular has no story mode, only smack talk. We have plenty of theme songs for him already that capture his vibes perfectly, so all they needed to do was commission a Vocaloid producer who writes in at least a thematically similar style. Like... I dunno, Ryo? Giga? Mitchie M? They've all made hype/upbeat/inspirational music before.
But no. Let's get Kairiki Bear to do it.
Kairiki Bear, who famously writes angst almost exclusively, whose discography consists of things like "People Allergy" and "Failure Girl." Whose music is fast, yes, but in a way that's frantic more than anything else. That's the one they wanted to represent their mascot.
So was it really a surprise that the end result was a song where Sonic rapidly oscillates between claiming his life to be The Very Very Best and The Very Very Worst, in as off-puttingly cheerful of a tone as possible? With a breakdown/rap(?) segment rambling on about some kind of Darkness?
Frankly it's a miracle that it got any heartwarming lyrics in there at all ("when you're by my side, it's already the best!"), because the whole song is a few steps away from sounding like a panic attack at any given moment. Because it's Kairiki Bear. Evidently, you could not pay this man to make a genuinely happy song with no caveats