“Feel Good Inc.” by Filous ft. LissA (cover of Gorillaz), Monday, July 25, 2022 (partial repost)

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, Kodaline, and others. For "Feel Good Inc." Filous teams up with electro-pop singer-songwriter LissA to bring a new interpretation to Gorillaz's 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 its 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 makes 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 Gorillaz 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. It was only in a college American History course that I learned about the 1868 novel by Horatio Alger titled Ragged Dick; or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks. The novel was a popular serialized coming-of-age novel that ultimately sold capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit as the American Dream. The story follows a young boy who has run away from a drunk father and starts to make a living as a shoe shiner, charging an exorbitant rate of 10 cents. Little by little, Dick can save up enough money, and by a heroic act of saving a drowning child, Dick is rewarded with a new suit and a job at the father of the drowning child's mercantile. Horatio Alger's novels have been credited for popularizing the idiom "rags to riches." But for every one of Horatio Alger's almost 130 novels, Upton Sinclair or John Steinbeck's novels are telling the plight of the everyday American who is the victim of big business. Alger's novels tell us what we can do if we're tenacious, and yes we have to be tenacious in a cutthroat capitalistic society. But it was Sinclair's novel that moved people to elect politicians who would pressure the meat industry to improve sanitation and working conditions. Books that show the dark side of that entrepreneurial spirit and push us to elect those who will give us a safety net are probably better, though.

Live Performance Track:

Gorillaz: 

Read “Feel Good Inc.” by Gorillaz on Genius