“Feel Good Inc.” by Filous ft. LissA (cover of Gorillaz), Friday, July 9, 2021
You might know Filous if you get the bonus tracks of pop singers. He's an Austrian producer, musician, and remixer, and he's remixed Selena Gomez, Troye Sivan, Kodeline, and others. For "Feel Good Inc." Filous teams up with electoro-pop singer-songwriter LissA to bring a new interpretation to Gorillaz' 2005 hit, "Feel Good Inc." The song has been covered by multiple artists, and while the original is the best, Filous's cover highlights the melancholy of the song by stripping the song of its bass-line, and leaning into it's minor chord melody. Filous's "FGI" is laidback. It's a perfect coffee shop cover of the track because coffee shop tracks often don't have rapping or words like "ass crack." While today's song of the day is by Filous, it's the artistry of the musicians behind Gorrilaz that make this song interesting.
DON'T STOP. GET IT, GET IT! In 2001 Blur frontman Damon Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett released what would go into the Guinness Book of World Records as the "most successful virtual band," meaning a band that existed in the studio rather than on the road. Blurring the lines between Rock, Hip-Hop, Electronic, and Pop, Gorillaz were a hit on multiple radio formats. In 2005 when the band released their follow up with the lead single "Feel Good Inc.," it was a song that was played everywhere. But it was also a misunderstood song. The funky bass and hip-hop contrasting with the emo-style sung lyrics, made it seem like the perfect summer party anthem, similar to their 2001 summer hit "19-2000" (Soulchild Remix), but just as many artists got away with hiding sexual innuendo to their songs, Gorillaz hid an Orwellian dystopia below the bass-line making the minor key "Feel Good" track sound like the direct opposite of the song's message. And like other tracks the Gorrillaz wrote both for their debut, fellow Demon Days tracks, and their albums thereafter, "Feel Good Inc." touches social issues. The themes in "Feel Good Inc." alone of corporate greed, consumerism, and sedating the masses aren't typical themes in pop music.
CITY'S BREAKING DOWN ON A CAMEL'S BACK. Jerod saw his future laid out in front of him if he were to stay on his dad's farm that summer. In some ways the farm was freedom from this future, if the farm were to last. But the taxes were killing his father. And now he was going to pay taxes on the camp, too. It was only a matter of years that Jared would have to go to work at one of the factories in Norwich or Greene. And that day would be the death of his soul. So many of his classmates were already planning on it. When you go to work for the factory it's the beginning of the end of your monotonous days. It's the same repetitive work day in and day out. It's the same watering holes with the same girls. Even the ones a year out of high school just looked tired, their eyes grew lifeless. He thought about the girls who used to go to school with his older siblings. How in their early twenties they started looking hunched over and haggardly. How their minds started to go. Florida was supposed to be a fix for that--getting out of the small town. And Florida had opened his mind to a bigger world full of Interstates and people with money and strange religions. Yet, he had seen the same pattern of souls being sucked from his friends' faces, but rather than working for the factory, they were working multiple part-time jobs and still barely making rent. And so was Jerod. And to top it all off, there was the conflict in Florida with his wife's parents. Then the phone call from his younger brother saying that their uncle had died, leaving the brothers with a sawmill.
Comments
Post a Comment