Superorganism is… an art pop band? Synthpop? Vapourwave? Maybe not vapourwave but they’re clearly influenced by the genre, as they are by seemingly every genre under the indie pop umbrella. Officially they’re from England, but they’re also from Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia, and formed the year before they had even met in real life. This is a concept I can see taking off by the way, I was in a folk band once with a couple of Americans I had only ever known online as well. Anyway, with such a mix of cultural backgrounds, surely the band could be expected to release some music with a clear sense of individualism and cultural diversity? Well…
At the time of writing, Superorganism only has one album; an eponymous album released on 2nd March 2018. It’s certainly not like any album I’ve heard before or since. The creativity in the sound of the album alone is enough of a reason for you to give it a chance, but I find the message of the album very interesting as well. Rather than celebrate the individuality of the band members who are from all corners of the earth, the message seems to be the band celebrating their loss of individuality. They didn’t choose the name ‘Superorganism’ purely because it sounds cool, in the band’s own words:
A superorganism is a creature
Made up of many different individuals
Thanks to technological systems
We are tied together into a single processing system
The singer, Orono, also suggests many times throughout the album that she even wants to be a superorganism, comparing the chaos of a human life to the simplicity of just “being a prawn”, and even flat out saying multiple times in the song SPROGNSM that she wants to be a superorganism, as does everyone else. A lot of people may find this hard to relate to, after all we all want to be individuals, right? Everyone wants to be distinct and stand out from everyone in the crowd, surely?
This is the most Gen Z oriented album I’ve ever heard, to the point where you’ll probably have trouble relating to a single word of it if you aren’t a Zoomer. Generation Z is the first generation to be born where the internet has existed and been an integral part of our lives no matter when in the generation you were born. Through that, a serious fragmentation of popular culture has occurred. There’s a reason there hasn’t been a band of Beatles, or Queen, or Oasis-like proportions since the advent of the internet, it’s because entertainment is so readily accessible that we aren’t forced to watch whatever’s on 5 of the 6 channels available on the TV. If I wanted to listen to a song from the 60s, I can. If I want to listen to a song from the 40s, I can. If I want to listen to a mashup of the DK Rap from Donkey Kong 64 and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, I can. There’s a reason everyone bangs on about how much they hate the top 40, it’s because we don’t have to like it anymore. Despite this, there are a few things almost everyone in Gen Z can relate to. Laying awake at night on your phone when you know you should be sleeping, aimlessly scrolling through the internet when you know you have better things to do, dreaming of being famous. Ideas that we all relate to can be portrayed through memes, or gifs, or even songs in this case.
Because of everything I just said, Superorganism is not about superorganisms. It’s not even entirely about the loss of individuality that superorganisms are used to represent, despite that being the idea explored the most throughout the album. Superorganism is about being a Zoomer. The album is cyclical, like Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It starts with Orono waking up in the morning and ends with her alarm going off in the same, or maybe the next morning. It’s like how The Wall starts with the phrase “-we came in?” and ends with the phrase “Isn’t this where-“ so that when the album is listened to on a loop it repeats itself, the album represents a day in the life of the average Zoomer. Wake up, do some schoolwork, daydream, chat to your internet friends, waste some time on the internet, try to fit in, go to sleep, do the same the next day. In this sense, the album rejects individuality for a reason. It wants to be generic to the average Gen Z kid, so they can relate to it and realise “Hey, maybe someone else is like me as well”.
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