Unikum’s Corner of Hidden Treasures is a column in which Unikum recommends pieces of media they believe more people should know and love.
So, if you’ve never heard of Owl City (‘Fireflies’, ‘Good Times’) you are either way too young or a feral creature that needs to find a better place to live than beneath a rock. But hey, this is a column about underrated stuff, why am I talking about this? Well, although the song ‘Fireflies’ originated from this album, I barely hear anyone talk about the rest of it. So that’s why I’m here to pick up that gauntlet.
I’m not here to preach I was one of the shining beacons of the community that was there “before they were mainstream”. I came to Owl City the same time as most others with ‘Fireflies’, however, I stayed , because honestly, I don’t get how ‘Fireflies’ took off when almost every other song is a banger on this album!
Let’s start of with saying that the album stays within the same electronica music genre throughout it all, if you didn’t quite like the style of ‘Fireflies’ nothing else is probably going to win you over, although there are some differences in tempo and the style that might persuade you. The songs all vary from sappy love music to the most random things like going to the dentist. One of my favorite aspects is the range of emotions the album covers. No matter what mood you’re in, ‘Ocean Eyes’ has something to encapsulate it, a portrayal of your emotions in the grandiose symphony of music.
As eluded to previously, the song selection is a conjoining of a weird selection that somehow is able to work so effortlessly together, from the ethereal titles like ‘Vanilla Twilight’ to something as frank as ‘Dental Care’ which contains no metaphor, it is quite literally describing going to the dentist. And that’s the beauty of it, there is no rhyme nor reason to it, we’re at the mercy of whatever wild tangent Adam Young (the artist behind Owl City) has decided to embark on. Something is layered in beautiful metaphors rooted in average situations, others have nothing beneath the surface and that’s completely fine, because what they don’t offer in elusive thematic, the make up for in up-beat music.
But I can waste words trying to persuade you to listen to this music, but music can’t really be described in the same way as movies or literature, because it doesn’t relay as much on the semantic nature of language, music is its own language in a way. However, I implore you to give the album a chance, and if not its entirety, at least listen to these:
- ‘Tidal Wave’
- ‘Vanilla Twilight’
- ‘Hello Seattle’
There’s no real way to end this segment, so instead, I will use the final verse of ‘Tidal Wave’ because I think it’s a beautiful string of prose, that I think everyone deserves to hear:
“It hurts just to wake up
Whenever you’re wearing thin
Alone on the outside
So tired of looking in
The end is uncertain
And I’ve never been so afraid
But I don’t need a telescope
To see that there’s hope
And that make me feel brave.”
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