SONG: “Serotonin” (a penitential girl in red cover). (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: This isn’t based on any research; it’s a cover of a girl in red song… although it’s maybe closer to this more minimal acoustic version the band recorded for MTV more recently. I recorded this for missing the monthly deadline on an original song for September 2024.
ABSTRACT: I first heard this song when I think it was just coming out and it appeared on Song Exploder. I immediately socked it away on a list of “sciencey songs” and then eyed it, sitting there in all its dance pop/girl power glory as something I’d be very foolish to attempt. But I am a fool.
Recording this actually occupied a lot more time and bandwidth than it sounds like, for something relentlessly lo-fi. I actually recorded scratch vox & guitar which I then used as scratch, which is audio-ese for “I recorded a real vocal track and a real, separate guitar track, and then removed the scratch track. There are lots of other tracks – a single-note rhythm doubling the middle finger on my right hand (it’s an F#), a sine-wave synth, and then all the crazy stuff at the end. I am interpolating a Magnetic Fields song in the outro, in part because I had the bad luck to earworm myself with “Take Ecstasy With Me” a few weeks before I decided to learn this song… but also partially because one of the few things I know about serotonin neurochemistry is that MDMA feels so good because it sort of floods your receptors with serotonin, so your normal serotonin levels get depleted the next day. At least, back in the 90s, there was definitely a culture that was using Prozac and other SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) to make the post-X blues milder. (I have always loved that Merritt described that song as, “I’m making a case for taking this drug. Not just, let’s take this drug, but it’s a moral imperative for you to take this drug.”)
Any implication that the girl in red song and the Magnetic Fields song are related insofar as illegal drug use goes is purely accidental and something I was actually a little nervous about implying. I’m just fascinated by the shared neurochemistry.
And I love an antiphon.
I also sort of made a project out of taking what I hear as “dance music” and doing a version with no drums. I could immediately, the first time I heard it (which admittedly was on a podcast about taking apart songs track by track to see how they work), feel the plaintiveness at the center of it. I have never been prescribed antidepressants, but definitely have been aware of chemicals misfiring up there from time to time, and I know the value of reminding oneself, “You are not your brain chemistry. You can change this if you take these steps.” We are not our intrusive thoughts … or not exclusively our intrusive thoughts.
Recording this got so consuming that I never finished the September original, now October original, on time … although it’s still a waltz, still taking shape, still needs another verse. I think this means I owe another cover. I wonder if I’ll look for a newer song or go back to the oldies. So much science in popular songs, still….