1. Under the Big Top - A Song for The Stranger
Вставка
- Опубліковано 16 вер 2020
- CW: Blood (implied), Clowns (briefly mentioned), Coulrophobia, Dissociation, Flaying/Skinning, Identity theft, Imposters, Loss of self, Paranoia-inducing, Uncanny valley
LYRICS:
My name is... (x3)
Mine but don’t fret
Let me get you a fancy new
Mask just don’t ask
Why the ‘paint’ is so warm
Come, take a seat
We entreat you don’t fight it’s too
Late, take our bait
And be doomed to perform
Under the big top
We self-shop
And name swap
Your me is torn free
And you’re not who you were.
But what is who?
Were they you?
Were you them too?
Defaced and erased
In the carousel’s blur.
Who am I… (x2)
Who are you...
Well, some might address
Our impressive ensemble as
Scary or very
Much outside the norm
Pay them no mind
You will find what great fun it is
Seeing and being
The circus take form
CHORUS
My name… (x2)
Where did it go?
A nomen unknown
Has been shown to stoke Strangers to
stress and obsess
About all proper nouns
Here we all share
Like the pair of our strongmen we
Skin someone’s grin
And then send in the clowns
I am a parent, or child, or favourite brother?
I have a name and it’s something or other
I am a partner forgot long ago
I have You HAD a name only I know
I am not... Could you be...
Ira, Dinah Owen, Noah, Olga, Tanya, Kevin, Nora, Orla, Wanda, Yasmin, Oscar, Ursula
Gregor, Graham, Sarah, Yuri, Daniel Nathan, Alexander, Nikola
I’m not
I’m not
Are you sure? Because:
CHORUS
Could you be:
Ira (No), Dinah, Owen, Noah(No), Olga, Tanya, Kevin(No), Nora, Orla, Wanda, Yasmin (No), Oscar, Ursula (No, no, no)
Gregor (No), Graham, Sarah, Sasha (No), Danny, Nathan, Alexander (No), Nikola
No!
I’m me, not them, I’m me, not them, I’m me, NotThem
And my name is...
-----
SPOILERS up to season 4 ahead:
How do you write a song that’s supposed to be a dialogue when you only have one (1) voice/instrument and little to no editing skills? If you find out, please let me know.
I wanted this to be 2 distinct voices, with one of them ending up subsumed. Great. But because it’s just me, said voices were going to sound exactly the same…because they are. I toyed with the idea of modulation, but for someone who learned Audacity has a loudness normalizer a full 6 years after first downloading it, that seemed pretty ambitious. I ended up falling on the short-hand of 1 voice = victim, more than 1 voice = monster.
Adding to that conundrum, was the knowledge that the rhyme scheme for this one would be a reeeeal pain. It’s probably a good thing this was one of the last I wrote because if I’d started with it I probably would have had some sort of aneurism.
[SPOILERS---]This started out as ‘I guess some rando is getting their identity stolen’, and slowly but surely became saturated with ‘fuck you, Tim Stoker, specifically’. I was hesitant to identify anyone or anything in this song because I felt it would take away from the feeling of anonymity, which was sort of the point. But I realized it didn’t sit right to leave Tim out. He’s a character that I never particularly related to, but after season 3 I found myself thinking about him a lot more. And I wasn’t sure why until the end of season 4, where a lot of arcs converged, and characters grew, and cows were admired, and apocalypses were had that I got a better idea.
I don’t think it’s too radical to posit that from season 1 to season 4 everyone’s quality of life lowered. Generally, in this Horror Podcast, people - Jonah excepted. Ass. - aren’t feeling great. (’In the sad and scary show, people feel sad and scared’. Truly a groundbreaking analysis).
What got to me about Tim was that like everyone else, his quality of life declined, but not only did it happen very, very quickly, he also started out in a better place than say, John, or Daisy. He wasn’t without troubles, but he was the cheerful, lynchpin extrovert that kept The Archives from being a completely unpleasant place. By starting out alright, he had farther to fall.
His descent is less of a gentle slope and more of a steep drop-off. He was a bubbly, flirty dude, reduced to a bitter shell who died for vengeance without hesitation. Among his last words, “I don’t forgive you” were some of them. That’s a far cry from the guy who conveyed so much cheekiness in audio format alone that the fandom collectively decided he had finger guns locked and loaded at all times.
He lost everything. He hit rock bottom and there was never a glimmer of anything pulling him out of it even a little. He lost his brother, he lost a woman he - romantically or no - was close enough with that she knew about his brother, and he died without ever being able to remember what she actually looked or sounded like. John had Martin, and later on, when he finally got the hint, Martin had John. Basira and Daisy had each other. Elias had his ego. Melanie and Georgie had each other. At the end, Tim had no one because everyone was taken by a monster that could be anyone. Jesus. Cosmic horror, amiright folks? [---SPOILERS]
i love how the "im me, not them" turns into "im me, not-them", great song
I enjoy how there are easter eggs in the name list.
Gregor - Nikola's creator
Graham - replaced by Not-Them in episode 3
Sarah, Daniel, Nathan - victims of the Anglerfish in episode 1
Yuri - victim of the Stranger in episode 44
Danny - Tim's little brother who was taken by the Stranger when they were kids.
Alexander - victim of the Stranger in episode 54
Nikola - Nikola Orsinov, a Stranger avatar that Tim kills
Sasha - Another employee from the Archives, replaced by Not-Them
Ye! Love me an easter egg!
(Or better yet, a whole basket...)
+
"stoke strangers??" stoker? tim stoker? or am i just inventing puns that are not there
;)
I SAW THAT TOO 😮
the lyrics at the end gave me vibes of "I'm me, not them" "i'M mE Not ThEm" like the stranger is mocking the protagonist's attempt at retaining their identity
I love how if you put it on loop, the song never really ends
No. NO WAY! I can't stop replaying it is SO SO GOOD. I am smiling SO MUCH! the whole idea of the "Person" Not knowing their name or who they are and slowly being taken over by the NotThem is SO GOOD! I was looking at the lyrics and got chills when I realized at the end the person saying "It's me, not them." Is actually saying "It's me, NotThem." UGH! CHILLS! lyrical genius.
I am a simple being
I see stranger,,,, i clicke
just now realizing that the stranger's song came first because the first statement in the series was one of the stranger. love your music!
The song is so well constructed in this intentionally broken way and dissonant way that causes a brilliant effect
I found the fic this correlates to before I found this, I wouldn’t have expected this kind of beat for it based on the lyrics, makes sense though, very much Toy Soldier vibes
Please share the fic!
This one is very beautiful, it really evokes the essence of losing who you are completely, and trying to justify you’re really *yourself* when there isn’t a yourself anymore. Personally I see the stranger as an entity born out of a fear of change. Maybe you grow out who you used to be, move somewhere new, or you change your name, etcetera. Sometimes other people will compare “who you were before” which can be really worrying if you don’t quite remember what you were like or what changed before whatever milestone you’ve passed.
I really love how you carry these songs with just your voice!! It’s really inspiring to me because I can’t play instruments for the life of me and aligning digital compositions to my voice is really difficult. It’s nice to see that voice-only songs can be wonderful as well :)
I feel like the stranger is just generally a fear of something you don't quite understand, a worry you can't quite place or the discomfort with something you think shouldn't be the way it is. Something that has changed, or will change, or might change, is that, but not everything Stranger is change, I think, for example the circus always was that way, it's just that the way it is doesn't feel right.
Although with this in mind, I find an interesting prospect in your comments on change. Specifically, the fear of a 'you' that doesn't exist, finding not your current self strange and too changed but finding that you are not the person people view you as, and the fear of encountering people who will judge you for things you don't remember doing or people who think to know you when who they know isn't you, and having to confront this face that seems to have been your own but that just isn't now. I wonder if that would be a thought for the Stranger?
makes a lot of sense as to why my metathesiophobic self has such issues with the Stranger ksdjgklsjklg
THAT DESCRIPTION DESTROYED ME IT PUT INTO WORDS WHAT IVE BEEN TRYING TO FOR A YEAR LMAO :'))))))
Im kinda late to the TMA hype but i cant express how much i love this. It captures stranger so well i cant. I love you❤️
I love how the songs have the tune of bard(?) like the ones you hear from some of the songs The Mechanism made
this is so haunting and tragic but somehow still whimsical? god you did an AMAZING job with it. usually I'm not a fan of music that's just vocals but personally, I think backing music would have detracted from it. really, this is brilliant.
I also love that it's a waltz--it really gets the circus-y feel, and the fact that as far as I can tell, every name given is someone who's been effected by the Stranger makes me oddly happy. There's just a lot of attention to the details, and the wordplay at the end is EXCELLENT.
I feel like the barest hint of music would be cool, like a single violin melody just faintly heard underneath
WHAT THE FUCK? THIS IS FANTASTIC! WHY IS THIS SO UNDER-APPRECRIATED?
This is wonderful! Even without any instruments, it felt like the song has insinuations (for lack of a better word. Vibes??? Maybe???) of a grand, violin-heavy string section for nearly the entirety of it with a calliope and big boomy drums pitching in to try and make an incredibly dizzying whirly music storm at the chorus. I got all this just from a purely sung song. However you did this... just bravo!
I don’t know if it’s done on purpose, but I find is so beautiful that the chorus fits almost perfect with the poem from the end of mag 165
OH MY GOD the parts where it’s a bit faster or higher or louder make it feel so uncanny it’s PERFECT
I keep coming back to these songs and I even sing them in the shower! I have about half of them fully memorized and you can bet if anyone could hear me singing about all that is fear in my baritone they'd probably tell me to see a shrink x3
Doing my part to feed the Fears and the Algorithm.
play this song and then shuffle your music feed and the first line of the next song determines their name
Honestly I want to experience the Stranger. I think losing my identity / sense of 'identification' in the world would be kind of fun/thrilling, in the same way that riding a rollercoaster at the carnival is fun. But maybe I'll be proven wrong if I actually experience it :)
I mean as a genderfluid person the stranger is basically every day for me. Just like, any time I try to wrap my head around my gender identity it becomes a confusing shamble of nonsense.
I mean in a few episode it’s described as incredibly painful. My source the merry go round.
I heard you can experience ego loss while taking psychedelics. Which it sounds like what the stranger does
@@thatmoththothMOOD
I'm not the only one!
I’ve listened to this song a hundred time (btw I love it) but I’ve just realised,
When the victim’s trying to find themself the monster starts listing what they could be.
Parent could follow Gregor, child and favorite brother could both be Danny (but favorite brother especially), child could also be Nikola.
But “partner forgot long ago” is definitely Graham, completely forgotten by Oliver Banks after being replaced by the NotThem.
Or also, after reading the desc, partner forgot long ago could be Sasha, beloved and forgotten by Tim. Who lost everything to the stranger.
I've listened to this album so many times and I keep discovering new things. I'm amazed.
Also love how this one could be a perfect loop.
i just realized how much musical vibes i get from all of the songs for the fears- like- oh my god i love them so much they're amazing
I’m so sad none of these songs are on any other streaming service other than sound cloud
As someone who had wondered how Magnus would do as like a musical, uh. GOD THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD?!
parts of this really remind me of torah and haftara trope for some reason? its absolutely beautiful and as someone who has been jewish my entire life having something that sounds like torah but slightly off definitely adds to the stranger vibe. this is absolutely beautiful and likely my secod favorite song of yours
Ha - I love that! It is entirely possible this reminded you of tropes because while writing, I stopped and asked myself on multiple occasions 'does this sound too much like synagogue music?' (The bridge section of The Eye, I definitely remember mulling over)
Don't get me wrong, I love the songs and their beautiful minor harmonies, but it seemed like a...not great thing to have a Jewish sound to music about omnipotent forces of evil -_-.
While some songs - like for The Desolation - had a pretty specific gregorian chant vibe, I think you may have picked up on musical stuff I didn't even mean to put in. Stuff that's just there because it's an influence I have also been hearing my whole life.
@@DaughterofProspero yeah, if i ever attempt to write songs i always find thaf they sound very similar to torah trope so i understand the struggle. also you have a fantastic name, the tempest is my second favorite shakespeare play and i was in a production of it this summer
I really love this! I can imagine a scene in my head so clearly, you wrote and sang this song in such a cinematic way! I really love the harmony on "perform" at 0:34.
this is so amazing! you really really nailed the stranger vibes and im endlessly intrigued to see the rest of your works
This is absolutely BREATHTAKING. Your vocals, your lyric-writing, all the character names, the layering, the melody-- LITERALLY EVERYTHING. I am speechless. I must now consume all the songs you've crafted.
I've listened through this entire playlist, and they're all some of the best fan songs I've ever heard; I particularly like the melody of this one. You just capture the fears so well; and the songs are just musically amazing to listen to, your voice is incredible!
Absolutely my favourite song in this playlist (a very difficult choice mind you, cause of how good they all are)
Kinda fitting though that this would be my favourite, cause the stranger is my favourite power, one I would give almost anything to be an avatar of. To me, identity feels like wearing clothes that are too tight, or too heavy, making it difficult to move.
This is incredible, you captured the stranger so well and the way it gradually took over was amazing. I can't wait to hear the rest of this series (as well as your other works)
oooooohh oooh heck heck heck this is great
god this is so haunting and genuinely terrifying i love it
The first time I looked through your tma songs playlist I didn't understand why this one was the most watched but after coming back to it and relistening to it multiple times over about a week...
Yeah, I understand now
This is the only song that has a thumbnail that is different from the illustration in the video (A music note and a mask respectively.) Is this just so that the music note would be the playlist's thumbnail, or is it also because of The Stranger's shifting appearances and unclear identities?
Both!
Ideally, the playlist's thumbnail/album cover would be the music note. But, since that's not how UA-cam rolls, I put it on The Stranger's song because of the shifting identities thing. Also because it's the first song.
Hey hey! First off: this song is GREAT and I'm excited to hear the others, second: what made you think it was okay to wreck my feelings with that description?? (You're absolutely right and you should say it but ouch) third: small note but could you add spoiler warnings to the description? For the lyrics itself but especially for your explanation
Holy shit this is GLORIOUS. The very early music vibe!! The vocals!!! The absolutely perfect tuning and those little moments of discordancy!!! I just love the cadences and ahhhh it's so good on my brain to listen to.
These lyrics are fantastic and the vibe is so utterly spooky.
This is honestly amazing, I found myself dancing to it only ten seconds in!
WAIT. I just had a realization. Are the two "Strongmen" mentioned at 2:38 a reference to Breekon and Hope?
Yes! Good catch ;)
Wow, Miranda! Absolutely gorgeous, so powerful 🔥🔥🔥
I keep returning to this song, I love it so much! V excited to hear the rest :D
This gives off massive Emily Rohm vibes.
AAAA I *LOVE* THIS SONG
Also your analysis on Tim on the description
Hauntingly beautiful voice! I'm so glad I found you!!
I am so glad I stumbled across these songs, I love the tone so much.
oh boy 👀🥺😍
please tell me one of these days this stuff will drop on spotify
your voice is really nice!! you did really good with this song!
THIS IS PERFECT is it on Spotify yet?
:D Thank you!!!
This is the embarrassing part where I admit I have barely used Spotify. But once more songs are up I'll probably look into making an album playlist.
I am enraptured
@DaughterofProspero that'd be wonderful!!
@@DaughterofProspero please do i want to add pretty much every single thing done for Magnus
Wait wait wait wait, what's your name huh?
Copy pasted Lyrics
My name is... (x3)
Mine but don’t fret
Let me get you a fancy new
Mask just don’t ask
Why the ‘paint’ is so warm
Come, take a seat
We entreat you don’t fight it’s too
Late, take our bait
And be doomed to perform
Under the big top
We self-shop
And name swap
Your me is torn free
And you’re not who you were.
But what is who?
Were they you?
Were you them too?
Defaced and erased
In the carousel’s blur.
Who am I… (x2)
Who are you...
Well, some might address
Our impressive ensemble as
Scary or very
Much outside the norm
Pay them no mind
You will find what great fun it is
Seeing and being
The circus take form
CHORUS
My name… (x2)
Where did it go?
A nomen unknown
Has been shown to stoke Strangers to
stress and obsess
About all proper nouns
Here we all share
Like the pair of our strongmen we
Skin someone’s grin
And then send in the clowns
I am a parent, or child, or favourite brother?
I have a name and it’s something or other
I am a partner forgot long ago
I have You HAD a name only I know
I am not... Could you be...
Ira, Dinah Owen, Noah, Olga, Tanya, Kevin, Nora, Orla, Wanda, Yasmin, Oscar, Ursula
Gregor, Graham, Sarah, Yuri, Daniel Nathan, Alexander, Nikola
I’m not
I’m not
Are you sure? Because:
CHORUS
Could you be:
Ira (No), Dinah, Owen, Noah(No), Olga, Tanya, Kevin(No), Nora, Orla, Wanda, Yasmin (No), Oscar, Ursula (No, no, no)
Gregor (No), Graham, Sarah, Sasha (No), Danny, Nathan, Alexander (No), Nikola
No!
I’m me, not them, I’m me, not them, I’m me, NotThem
And my name is...
Miranda? Is that you?