“Crazy 8s” by Mae, Saturday, July 30, 2022

Mae's sophomore record, The Everglow, is to this day their most beloved record. The band released the album in 2005 and rereleased it the next year as a deluxe edition with bonus tracks and a read-along booklet designed to enhance the listener's Multi-sensory Aesthetic Experience in 2006. With the band's releases of demos and two full-length records, Mae fulfilled their contract with Tooth & Nail Records. Later that year, the band signed with Capitol Records and began recording with legendary producer Howard Benson. Singularity was released in the summer of 2007 and was the only Mae record to be released on Capitol.

SMOKE-FILLED CASINOS, BUT WHAT DO WE KNOW WE'LL TAKE A CHANCE. 

Singularity is a unique album for Mae as it features a rock and New Wave sound not featured on the prior records. Drummer Jacob Marshall and keyboardist Rob Sweitzer named the album Singularity based on their discussions from a book by physicist Paul Davies. Marshall said of these conversations, "There is so much more for us to learn and understand and these ideas inspired us to question everything." The lyrical content of Singularity seems to deal with finding meaning out of chaos, which is alluded to in the band's making-of documentary. In a nutshell, Mae is addressing questions of evolution, theistic or atheistic, but coming to a conclusion that life has a purpose. "Crazy 8s," the second song on Singularity, builds on the self-doubt in the first song, "Brink of Disaster." The optimism of being in a band and "making it" flooding the lyrics on Destination: Beautiful and The Everglow are absent in many of the songs on Singularity. Now the band is "chasing heaven as it fades into black." 

The infinite symbol looks like an 8
turned on its side. Photo source.

WOULD YOU STAY WITH ME TONIGHT?  The gritty bass and guitars contrast with the beautiful musicality of the chorus. The verses of the song detail a kind of useless energy that you can do nothing with all the while avoiding the most important things in life. Bearing in mind the multiple meanings of the song's title, "Crazy 8s" evokes several kinds of chaos. The song possibly takes its name from a card game, often played by children, in which the goal of the game is to discard all cards. However, the song also seems to allude to a race track in the shape of an 8 or the infinity symbol, hence showing a kind of futility. On The Black Sheep Podcast by HM Magazine, Mae's singer Dave Elkins, and guitarist Zach Gehring talk about the tension in the band during the recording of Singularity. They talk about the tension in the band that came with the pressure of recording with a major label and the disconnection between the band members due to the recording process. On a recent episode of Aaron Sprinkle and Matthew Schwartz's podcast Moontraveling with guest Jason Vena of Acceptance, Sprinkle and Vena recalled the aggressive micromanagement from Acceptance's time on Columbia Records. Mae, too, quickly departed from their major label as they wanted to produce music more experimentally. Today Mae has 104K monthly listeners on Spotify. Experimental bands that question everything rarely have a place on major labels or Christian Indie labels back in the early '00s. 

Read “Crazy 8s” by Mae on Genius.

"Crazy 8s" audio:

The band explains why they chose the name Singularity:

Behind the scenes about "Crazy 8s":