Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Century

This is the song of the century so far.

The parts do reveal pieces of the magic whole, but an itemized description is too small to fully capture the total’s essence. The synths are gigantic. They sound like sinister engines revving themselves in idle, like they are self-animating for some astronomical task. It is roughly as though the ghosts of the vessel’s buried sunken dead recorded the heavy engine blur of the Titanic as it struggled and sank deeper into the frigid Atlantic, and then ran that captured feed through bent circuits and subwoofers. The sounds don't fully come in until the middle of the first pre-chorus, either, so the song’s structure creates rabid anticipation, or torture, as stunning as the eventual euphoric release.

“Now put your hands up.”

Beyoncé sings her own background vocals, creating a polyphony that is paradoxically multitudinous, and yet borne of a solitary source. It manifests an auditory immersion chamber, a fraction of total sound.

1 comment:

  1. I love the keywords you chose for this entry.

    The only thing I'd change about this jam would be the annunciation of "like a ghost" which never ceases to bother me every listen.

    ReplyDelete