BLACK SWAN TRIBUTE

I watched this movie at the theatre when it came out and I remember that it felt like I knew it was going to become one of my favorites by some kind of design or fate. I could not really enjoy it back then, not because of the plot or the quality, but because of the circumstances, I was going through, which would not allow me to enjoy barely anything. Although I was more or less capable of understanding the movie, I could not empathize with the main character even having similar issues, but that’s what schizophrenia is: a constant contradiction in the way you perceive reality. 

This movie has clearly sufficient personality to be considered a cult film. I like how the metaphors of the main character's duality give the film a gothic style that I personally love. The aesthetic has been made with a lot of care and coherent with the script, which makes the whole schizophrenia story easy to understand for anyone without giving too many details away at first sight. Natalie Portman’s performance is amazing, no doubt she deserved the Oscar.

I originally used another song from the album for this tribute video but, after having meditated a little, I decided to change the song because the lyrics of the other one were more suitable for a different video and the song that I have finally used for Black Swan is more connected to the movie. This rocker style may be too heavy for the images but contrasts can be good sometimes. 

THESIS

I think I have a clear idea about how to determine the thesis of this movie because I can speak from my own experience. As I explained in the post about Schizophrenic Antichrist, schizophrenia has something to do with vulnerability and some people equate being vulnerable with being weak, so everyone tends to immunize their senses in order not to get hurt, but people who are extremely sensitive can’t help but be who they are so they end up repressing themselves. I think something similar happens to the main character of the movie: she’s very sensitive in contrast to the other characters, who are shown as rather careless people; and the relation of the main character with her mother denotes a lot of repressions as well. So I believe that these two factors are crucial in triggering Nina's descent into madness. She’s a victim of her own fear but her fear is also caused by the people around her who don’t give a shit about anything else than themselves. 

Thesis: Hypersensitive people who have been extremely repressed are more vulnerable to developing paranoid schizophrenia. 

ALBUM RECOMMENDATION (Dover - Devil Came To Me)

The second album of the Spanish band Dover was very popular in the 90s, especially here in Spain where it became a massive success and made them emerge as one of the most relevant bands in the worldwide grunge/rock scene back then. After that, they started to work with Barrett Johnson (one of the producers of Nirvana) and recorded their two following albums with him. These two albums are my favorites, especially the album I Was Dead For 7 Weeks In The City of Angels, which I will speak about in more detail in a future post as an album recommendation too. But despite this personal preference and just like most people and the band themselves say, I would claim that Devil Came To Me is their best album. This record not only contains the most popular hit in their career (Serenade) but is also very conceptual and mixes perfectly the balance between their grungy style and their pop melodies. The lyrics are pretty pessimist and dark and, as I said before, connected to the whole concept of the album (Christian religion and the devil).

 Experiments with other music styles aside, like their dancy album, Follow The City Lights, which I don’t completely dislike but it made a really bad impression on some of their fans, I think that they are a great band and I love them both as musicians and songwriters. 

Favorite songs: Devil Came To Me, Serenade, Winter Song, Spectrum, Rain Of Times, Judas, and Sick Girl.

SCHIZOPHRENIC ANTICHRIST

“I don’t care you’re calling me serious clown”

SONGWRITING

We all have demons inside and the only way of defeating them is to accept that they are inevitably part of us, so that we can face and control them. This song came up in a pretty visceral way and both verse and chorus occurred to me abruptly with their respective lyrics. I had the melody of Bon Jovi’s song Have A Nice Day running through my head and I wanted something very powerful to express, once again, this feeling of rage about that boy I was in love with, who hadn't treated me very well. What I particularly like about this song is the irony of expressing this powerlessness felling with such powerful and straightforward words. I think that these lyrics could not be more honest and true to who I am. This song defines perfectly this unapologetic part of me that was always repressed when I was hiding in the closet in high school. I have always been a very sincere and honest person with strong opinions and ideas that I’m not willing to deny anymore. It’s hard for all of us to be true to our hearts sometimes but there’s too much injustice and inequality in this world to just deny it. I don't like those people who are extremely positive and say that everything depends on your attitude in front of the world. Tell people who are dying from starvation that everything depends on their attitude. I guess that my point is that you can’t pretend that everything is perfect and cling to a false ideal because that’s one of the main causes of this ambivalence we are experiencing nowadays in a world where some people have plenty of riches and others have just nothing. And digging deeper into the song's message, I would even dare to say that this is one of the factors that cause mental illnesses too. Our society lives in a constant contradiction where we stumble on each other in order to be the most successful without directly admitting it. Everything is about fake looks and nothing comes from the heart. As I understand it, schizophrenia is about being vulnerable and we are the most vulnerable when we are not alone so then, I don't understand why people are always hiding their true feelings instead of finding the right balance between being respectful and honest. Being vulnerable is beautiful, you just gotta learn to let go and be true to yourself.

PRODUCTION

The instrumental of this song was entirely made by Marcel Sabater. The original demo had only a pad and the recorded voice, so he created those rocker guitars giving the song a more rebel character. The original melody of the voice was also changed in the choruses as a result of experimentation with the producer and I like this new direction the song went into. I recorded the voice twice, since the first time I did I couldn't really hit some notes due to an accident I had. So, when I was able to hit higher notes, we recorded the song in a higher key, which we did with other songs in this record as well, so that the voice would sound brighter.

SAW TRIBUTE - GAME OVER

The first Saw movie brought back a little glance of originality to the horror genre in 2004, with a script that had enough entity to create a renovated formula that would repeat itself with 6 sequels that were practically made in a row during the following years. This franchise made the torture porn sub-genera and its "dirty" visual style emerge as one of the most popular and demanded tendencies in horror, with other remarkably known franchises such as Wolf Creek or Hostel, back in the 2000's decade. I personally like the original and the first sequel, Saw 2. After that, I think that the formula tries only to get bigger and gorier without being original. However and no matter how repetitive they end up being, I've seen all of them and I think that this franchise can be clearly considered a cult phenomenon due to its unique visual style and story. It reminds of Scream somehow, since both franchises introduced refreshing elements in the first movie and they both did well at the box office back in their respective decades.

I wasn’t sure about this tribute video because the lyrics of the song that I used for it are about a breakup. The rocker music style contains that angry feeling that fits appropriately this type of video but it is still obvious that, in the end, it’s a song about a rupture. I searched for different movies but it was very hard to find one whose story would fit in with the theme of the song. The Game or Scream came to mind but I finally decided that, despite the simplicity of mixing the concept behind the song title with the whole sadist games idea in the Saw universe, no other combination could be better.

THESIS

In my opinion, this movie is about the prize that you pay sometimes for your mistakes. It is clearly and directly related to the classical idea of CARPE DIEM but the thesis goes beyond. It’s about taking responsibility for your acts because they affect other people’s lives and you must take responsibility for the consequences. 

However, I believe that this type of movie cannot be taken too seriously. I have always been a big fan of horror and I think that some jewels of cinema are part of this genre but I admit that, in most cases, horror films tend to be pointless and focused only on making a scary impression without digging too deep into it.

Thesis: Be careful about your acts in life because they implicate consequences.

ALBUM RECOMMENDATION - SHERYL CROW (Self-titled)

The self-titled album of Sheryl Crow was for me a great discovery that I found in one of the small music shops of Carrer Tallers in Barcelona, back in 2012. I used to go there to spend some time trying to forget about how shitty my life was and I bought lots of my favorite albums there. As happened to me with many other artists, I got interested in Sheryl Crow because of my favorite singer Ainhoa, who had written on her Facebook page some of her musical influences, which included Muse, Placebo, Juliette Lewis, PJ Harvey and the mentioned Sheryl Crow, to name a few. I randomly picked up this Sheryl Crow album that day in Carrer Tallers and it clearly was a good decision, for I was very surprised about how good the album was when I first listened to it, right after getting home. I remember that I listened to the whole album in one go because I enjoyed it a lot and I feel the same way still every time that I listen to it again. I must confess that I haven’t listened to Crow's entire discography, mostly her hits and random songs, though I presume that this must be her best album because it’s just amazing. I think her voice sounds great in it and the songs, especially the lyrics, are very relevant even today. Essential for the nineties vibe lovers!

Favorite songs: Maybe Angels, A Change Would Do You Good, Redemption Day, If It Makes You Happy, Every Day Is A Winding Road and Love Is A Good Thing.

GAME OVER

“You were never real, that’s fine with me”

SONGWRITING 

This song went through diverse phases. I really wanted to write something very powerful and overwhelming to express this feeling of rage for a boy who hadn’t treated me very well so, the first part I wrote was the verse and its abrupt melody. The bridge was also pretty clear from the beginning but, after that, I didn’t know how to continue the song, so I started to search into my memories for other existing lyrics and melodies I had already composed in the past and mixed them in a chaotic way, trying for them to make sense and fit in with the rest. Then, I showed the demo to the producer and he wasn’t 100 % convinced about it so, after one of our sessions where we tried to get to an agreement in vain, I decided to change the chorus for something simpler and more effective. He really liked the changes so we proceeded to follow that direction. In the end, the song turned out to be very different from how I had imagined it in the beginning but yet, more effective and coherent undoubtedly! It is not one of my favorites as a composition but I really love the result of the recorded vocals! And I think that the lyrics are very honest and easy to relate to. This song is clearly about a frustrated crush and I would humbly like to believe that it could resemble some of the fierce and furious songs from my favorite rocker female artists such as Anouk or Alanis Morissette. 

PRODUCTION

After these changes in the songwriting were made, the music production was pretty clear. What we did differently, in this case, was to change the key in which the song was originally composed for a higher one, so that the voice would sound stronger and brighter. Some parts were a little difficult to sing but I felt pretty confident that day at the studio and I'm very proud of the result of the vocals in this one. The voice sounds strong and full of character and so do the mix and the master made by the producer. I'd say that this is the best song in the album concerning sonic production.

DONNIE DARKO TRIBUTE - Straight in Circles Upside Down

• Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit? 
• Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

My relationship with this movie is very curious. I became an instant fan after watching it for the first time because I found it magnetizing and I even made an important project about the movie for high school, at the end of second grade. Little did I know back then how that fiction would become part of my reality later when I experienced a psychotic break in my own skin.

The main character, who gives the movie its title and is wonderfully portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, has paranoid schizophrenia. But the truth is that I was never really conscious about the movie using this illness as one of its main themes before suffering the psychotic break myself. In fact, I wasn’t even conscious that having a psychotic break had something to do with the illness until 2 or 3 years after the breakdown. I guess that this was due to the fact that schizophrenia is, among mental illnesses, the greatest unknown of them all. Now, with some distance and considerable stability, I can understand better the movie and although some nostalgia has been lost along the way, it will always remain one of my favorite movies and main references, speaking in cinema terms. 

For this movie tribute video, I chose the song Straight In Circles Upside Down. As I explained in the latest post, the song is about alternate universes and versions of ourselves so, although the lyrics don’t really fit in with the story of the movie, I believe their spirit and background do. The idea of the circles as a metaphor for diverse perspectives and understandings of reality has a lot to do with the universe of the movie, and the line that is drawn between design and desire fits with the inner dilemmas of the main character as well, who seems to be unable to choose about his fate. I chose the scene where Donnie speaks to her psychologist about his beliefs as an introduction to the video because I personally feel the same way about life and it is the most important scene of the movie, according to director Richard Kelly.

THESIS

It’s hard to determine a single thesis for this movie. I would say that it has multiple: the movie deals with lots of subjects such as time travel, fate, family and teenage relationships, social criticism, bullying, and mental illness. each one of these subjects may derive its own philosophical message.  The final scene, inspired by the personal life of the director, is pretty revealing. I’m not sure what he wanted to transmit with it exactly, but I personally interpret it as the incapability of human beings to connect with each other. The movie contains lots of memorable phrases and lines too. I love the dialogue between Donnie and Frank at the theatre where the lines that introduce this post are reproduced, simply epic! But if I had to choose one line that could also serve as a thesis, it would be the one that Donnie pronounces in the English class, speaking about the Graham Greene short story. He says that the fact that the characters burn the money is an irony in that story because destroying is a form of creation and that would be the thesis for me or, at least, one of them. Life is unexpected and each second of it is being destructed and renewed at the same time. I also connect a lot with the idea of not following the crowd that this message implies. 

Thesis: DESTRUCTION IS A FORM OF CREATION.  

ALBUM RECOMMENDATION (Sia - This Is Acting)

I got to know about Sia's amazing talent recently. I had only heard her “Breathe me” song because it sounded in the background of one of those anti-bullying videos where the young kids tell their bullying stories with pieces of paper. I always thought that that song was wonderful but I barely knew anything about the artist. Later, when she became very popular, I wasn’t very interested in her at first, although the idea of hiding her face with her hair seemed appealing to me. It wasn’t until she released her last album and the Alive single that I started to really pay attention to her music. I felt extremely related to that song and I highly recommend its lyric video on youtube. After that, I started to look for information about her on the Internet and I was surprised by the great number of songs and albums she had released before. So far, I have only listened to this last album but I hope I can get to discover more from her because I find her music very interesting. This last album is very catchy and the lyrics have great messages about strength and overcoming. You can feel by her music that she’s a very sensitive person who has been through a lot of pain. She’s also very creative and her voice is unique, I love the way it cracks.

Favorite songs: Bird Set Free, Alive, Move Your Body, Unstoppable, Footprints. and Broken Glass. 

STRAIGHT IN CIRCLES UPSIDE DOWN

“Don’t you just let ‘em treat you like a fool”

SONGWRITING

October 2013. This song came up as an experiment. I had already started the music production private lessons back then and I needed to put some ideas in order. I had had the melody of the chorus running in my head for a long time and the idea of starting the song with the word “welcome” in the first line so that I could suddenly break the harmony of this invitation in the second line right after. Those two basic ideas were crucial to developing the rest of the song. Later, I added the metaphor of the circles as a way of showing that there are infinite points of view and perspectives and that we can’t simply divide things into two categories as we usually tend to do. The melody of the beginning of the verse was inspired by a song called La Turmis, from the first album of the Spanish band Dover, which became very popular in the nineties. The structure of the chords, which is repeated along with the whole song except for the break after the second chorus, was a pretty random and spontaneous choice. Most of the songs in this album have similar chord structures, taking into account that I don’t know much about playing the guitar yet. Besides, writing the lyrics and melody first and adding the chords later makes it hard for me to explore new and unusual chords. But I continue learning and I hope I get to know different ways of writing songs in the future, so they don't end up being repetitive structurally and melodically.

PRODUCTION

For this song, the producer asked me to add a third chorus (the original demo had only 2 choruses). That consequently meant a change in the lyrics so that the idea of showing an evolution along the song would remain coherent. In fact, this is probably one of the songs in the album that best shows this concept: none of the choruses has the same lyrics but they do keep similar structures in order to turn the negative meaning of the beginning around and make it positive at the end of the song. To me, this song has also similarities in the lyrics with the movie script structure theory of Syd Field and its turning points. Just like in a movie, I’m telling a story. There's a narrator, which is the singing voice in this case, and also the main character, which is the person the song is addressed to. As the lyrics of the song advance, we enter into the extraordinary world from the ordinary world and, once the story goes from being narrated personally to turning into the imperative mode, these two ideas get reunited together in the third chorus, showing new learning and perspective and turning its whole meaning around. So, I guess that this is somehow my personal way of wanting to show the world how art and reality get often mixed up, how they influence one another. and how fiction and fact can be hard to distinguish sometimes. If I had to go further, I could even say that this song is a message that I am sending to a future version of myself in a different time and space, but that would be a lot harder to explain.

Concerning the instrumental, this has been made by the producer, mostly. Both the introductory bass riff and the electric guitar solo after the second chorus are composed by him and I personally think they fit in very well with the song.

THE CROW TRIBUTE

I must confess that I have never been a very big fan of this movie. Not because I find it bad in general terms, but because I think it had the potential to be amazing, and for some reason that didn't happen in the end. One of those reasons is that, in my opinion, the script focuses too much on the revenge story instead of the love story, which ends up being secondary even though the thesis and the final line seem to be about this last one. I think that the vengeance story occupies too many scenes and it ends up being repetitive having to see each of the vile characters killed one by one. Maybe focusing a little more on the story of the young girl who was friends with the main character and his girlfriend or even adding an entirely new subplot would have made a significant difference. However, it can’t be denied that there’s an aura of mystery around the whole movie and, after all these years, it still has an enchanting and unique aesthetic. The gothic look of the movie is amazing and it has nothing to envy the films nowadays. Besides, the fact that the main actor died while shooting the film makes his last appearance on screen legendary and he will remain immortal thanks to that. So, despite some flaws in the script, this is still a great cult movie to be recommended.

I mainly chose this movie to be accompanied by the “I’ll Be There For You” song because the lyrics were directly inspired by one of the lines of the dialogue from the script, which reproduces the very same words: the memorable “it can’t rain all the time”  line which was translated in Spanish as something like “it can’t rain forever” or “it can’t rain eternally”. I remember I was emotionally touched when I first heard this line in the movie and it remains one of my favorite scenes in it.

Besides, rainy weather has always been something appealing to me, especially since I started to go through dark times in high school. I remember listening to “All is full of love” by Björk or watching the movie Stigmata while the rain was falling out there and feeling comfortable with the cloudy sky and the sound of the raindrops. Do you remember the amazing song “I’m only happy when it rains” by Garbage? That’s totally me! I guess that's because I like to believe that, no matter how sad or dark life gets sometimes, the rain is a reminder that the sun will rise up again someday. And we need to be reminded that, in order to shine, there's gotta be darkness too.

THESIS OF THE MOVIE

I would say that there are two theses in this case. Both of them can be extracted from the very same words written in the script. One of them could be the earlier mentioned “It can’t rain all the time”, meaning that nothing’s eternal: pain will fade away in the end and we need to learn how to embrace it in order to overcome it. On the other hand, the other thesis could be the final line of the movie, which is spoken by the young girl who also introduces us to the story in the opening scene: “If people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. BUILDINGS BURN; PEOPLE DIE, BUT REAL LOVE IS FOREVER. 

ALBUM RECOMMENDATION (Evanescence - Fallen)

Evanescence is an amazing band. Their catchy melodies and darkly poetic lyrics mix equally forming the perfect balance between the alternative and mainstream styles. I have always loved that balance in music, I don’t like something that’s extremely commercial or extremely alternative.

I got to know about them thanks to the Daredevil movie as a lot of people, I guess. That Bring Me To Life chorus caught me ever since the first time I heard it. Amy Lee’s voice is extremely beautiful and peculiar at the same time, I love it!

I love their three studio albums but I think the first one is the best, it’s a classic. This was one of the first albums I ever bought, coinciding with my first teenage years and it brings me good memories despite having bad times in high school. 

And I also love each and every song of the album, something that’s unusual when you first listen to a whole album.

Favorite songs: Bring Me To Life, My Immortal, Everybody’s Fool, Tourniquet, and Hello.