One of most interesting phenomena of 21st-century internet culture is the way memes have skyrocketed certain songs to common knowledge. However, more often than not, this results in a majority of people being able to recognize the song when they hear it. One of the most recent to achieve this status is a song called “For the Damaged Coda.”
Right now, those words probably mean nothing to you, but if I were to describe the meme it’s used in, I’m sure it would ring a bell. For example, you pull up a clip on YouTube, and it’s about 15 seconds long. Somber piano notes play in the background and things start to go wrong for whoever is on screen, then the second whatever is about to happen happens, the screen goes black and white, enters slow motion, and slowly zooms in on the victim’s face. Also at this moment, the piano suddenly gets louder and is bolstered by drums, bass, and a cascade of female “Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh…” vocals.
If you’re below the age of 20, chances are you could picture exactly what I was talking about. Funny how you can know something without knowing that you know it!
So this song is actually from the album “Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons” released in 2000 by a band named Blonde Redhead, made up of Kazu Makino and the brothers Amedeo and Simon Pace. They spent much of the 90s crafting their own brand of alluring noise rock, and on this album, the band achieves a more cohesive sound under the guidance of producer Guy Picciotto of Fugazi fame.
The song didn’t enter meme status until late 2017, and in the time prior to this (as a fan of the band), I remember finding it very peculiar that this two minute, largely instrumental coda of one of the more major tracks was the band’s top song on Spotify.
I would come to learn that the cause of this was that the song was used in “Rick and Morty” multiple times, as early as 2014. However, it was the song’s usage in the show’s third season back in September 2017 that gave it its greatest shot in the arm, with “Rick and Morty” also being at peak popularity and reaching a large audience. In the months following, the new meme format started to pop up and entered full force by early 2018.
There are plenty of other songs that are in the same boat as “For the Damaged Coda,” being heard and instantly recognizable to a listener but not identifiable by name. This includes AWOLNATION’s “Run” which was huge on Vine, Blank Banshee’s vaporwave classic “Teen Pregnancy,” and of course prog rock band Yes’s “Roundabout,” which supplies the bouncy bassline used in the “To Be Continued” memes.
There are many more that I’m forgetting, and I’m sure there will be many more songs, coming from seemingly random places, that will end up just like “For the Damaged Coda.”
