Have you ever wanted to get in a rocket ship and fly away, the stars flashing past you and all of your worries trapped in Earth’s atmosphere? Have you ever wanted to levitate above everything, floating away into the universe, melting into its matter?
It sounds like a scene from a movie, and a movie needs a sound track. If you’ve ever wanted to feel pure, forceful magic like how it might feel to jet away in a rocket ship, I know a few songs that encapsulate this feeling perfectly.
“CHIHIRO” by Billie Eilish
I have been a huge fan of Billie Eilish for years now, and I already know that there’s a lot of magic in her music. Her lyrics, melodies, bass lines, and everything in between come together to create stunning experiences for my ears.
I believe I first heard a snippet from this song before it came out, and after only a few seconds of listening, I knew it was going to be absolutely euphoric (I would expect nothing less from Billie). When the album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT finally came out, “CHIHIRO” was immediately my favorite track.
The first thing you notice about this song is the bass line, as it swings up and down underneath Billie’s voice. There is an intense build up throughout the song that begins with the lyrics “Open up the door, can you open up the door?” The words and melody here melt into an ethereal upper register where Billie sings, “Did you take my love away from me?” She spends time with each word, letting the notes fly.
The build up continues as you begin to hear layers of her voice that intertwine and almost disorient. She sings, “I don’t know why I called, I don’t know you at all” and the synthesizers move faster and get louder. Billie repeats the line, getting louder and echoing, like she’s yelling into the void to no response.
This build up is repeated similarly, with Billie’s vocals ascending into the air, touching down again, and setting up the song for another insane burst of magical sounds. The music continues and Billie sings, “Wringing my hands in my lap / and they tell me it’s all been a trap” with a lower voice joining in and bringing depth (I would assume it’s her brother Finneas, who always brings production to another level). She ruminates on this feeling of being trapped and misled as the synth rises, rushing through the wind like shooting stars, beginning to ring higher into the sky. The music ascends (and so do I at this point), expanding out into the universe and expelling the magic. Billie sings in the background, lamenting into the nothingness, “Don’t know if you’ll make it back / Don’t say that.”
After this insane build up and release, the song ends, just like that. It almost leaves you suspended in the air, heart thumping, waiting for something else to happen — but it doesn’t. Billie’s and Finneas’ production of this song is absolutely existential. “CHIHIRO” is ethereal and contains the power to make me feel like I’m flying away into the universe, giving up all my worries and anxieties. It is the epitome of levitation music in my book.
“I Know The End” by Phoebe Bridgers
I was absolutely baffled when I first heard this masterpiece by Phoebe Bridgers. It begins quite subdued and melancholic, but the end of the song explodes into existential terror.
Phoebe begins to prepare us for this explosion by singing about belonging and not belonging, about needing to flee somewhere else: “When the sirens sound, you’ll hide under the floor / But I’m not gonna go down with my hometown in a tornado / I’m gonna chase it.”
The music begins to build up more, and Phoebe sings more abstractly: “slot machines / fear of God” and then “It’s a government drone or an alien spaceship.” She breadcrumbs us into the end, insinuating that the world is almost over, or at least everyone thinks so. She says, “The billboard said, ‘The end is near’ / I turned around, there was nothing there / Yeah, I guess the end is here.” This build up displays everything society tries to concern ourselves with, including trying to decipher when the world will end.
As if the world does end in this song, the music explodes into a symphony of instruments, raging drums, and a choir of voices singing “the end is near” over and over again. This plays out for the final minute and a half of the song, soon switching to more eerie notes and tones wailing out into the night, where people are screaming and seemingly fighting for their lives. The musical production here paints a visceral picture of what the end of the world might sound like, or at least what it might sound like in a movie. It’s absolutely devastating and insane, and would probably be the soundtrack in my rocket ship as I fly away from the madness.
“Mercurial World” by Magdalena Bay
If you are already acquainted with Magdalena Bay, you’d be aware that their genre of music is already “straight out of the simulation” (as their Spotify bio says). All of their songs are very synth heavy and use cool sound effects to curate a specific simulation-techno-outer-space atmosphere. However, some of their songs are especially existential and magnetic.
“Mercurial World” opens with the line, “Hold me down to the Earth” and perfectly sets the precedent for what is to come. Mica Tenenbaum, the female lead, sings and the music already sounds ethereal, sparkling like stars. The pre-chorus comes and her voice changes with a filter, making it echo around as the music intensifies. She sings, “Living in a mercurial world” and the music explodes into what can only be described as the soundtrack to a MarioKart race set in space or a pinball machine or some other sci-fi/fantasy/techno world (I really think if you listen, you’ll understand what I’m saying).
Tenenbaum sings as the song returns to a melody bubbling under the surface, but it soon explodes again with the same techno-surreal music as she sings repeatedly, “Only, only you and me.” The music intensifies and exudes adrenaline, with a techno sound effect spinning around like it’s going to land on a prize. It begins to sound like the music flies past into the distance, but the ethereal voice stays as she softly repeats “Living in a mercurial world.”
This song is barely over three minutes long, but it takes you on a trip to a completely different world, timeline, or universe. This song introduced me to Magdalena Bay and scooped me right up into their simulation.
“Chaeri” by Magdalena Bay
If I’m going to make a list of bursting existential music, I have to include more than one song from Magdalena Bay. “Chaeri” has a similar softness that leads to an outburst of otherworldly music, but sounds more like the end of an interstellar movie than a techno simulation game.
The song begins with a bumping bass line, but remains pretty mellow for the first bit of the song. Tenenbaum sings about a lost love or friend, sounding absolutely celestial as she sings, “Chaeri, please, you’re killing me.” The beat begins to pick up after about two minutes, and Tenenbaum’s voice gets stronger, leading us into more of a buildup and a peek into the stellar world. She sings, “If you tell yourself you’ll never get out of bed” and the music finally bursts with magic and terror, like you’re hurtling through space toward a black hole.
This high fades after a bit, and Tenenbaum begins to sing a sort of dance beat softly. The music gradually intensifies and she sings louder, switching her words to “Let it come alive, let it grow” and “better cut and dried than unknown.” The change in lyrics and volume, the music coming back with a vengeance, and the sound effects radiating all make each second feel more existential than the last. The music rises further into the stars and disappears, sucked into oblivion.
Although a lot of the song is more subdued and mellow, the bursts that do come are absolutely wild and threaten to lift me off the ground every time I listen.
There are many more songs that I could include in this list, as I’ve managed to find many songs that articulate these feelings perfectly, but with so many different complexities. I understand that in describing these songs I might’ve overdone the metaphors. However, there really is no other way to describe this type of music, at least to me. This music always transports me to other places, and feels like the closest I’ll ever get to magic.