Chemicals

Album: released as a single (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Chemicals" is the first solo single for Parker Bossley, whose formere bands include Hot Hot Heat and Gay Nineties. He told Songfacts about the track:

    "The concept to 'Chemicals' came to me at a music festival. After two nights and days of partying, I noticed that my altered states had simply become the normal. We weren't even 'high' anymore. The hook, 'We take the chemicals until they don't work anymore' came to mind and I thankfully had like 2% left on my phone so I typed it into the notes.

    I think that although that moment of truth came to me in a party atmosphere, the sentiment can be taken much broader. This kind of dark side of human nature to squeeze everything you can out of something or someone and then move on to the next thing.

    I came to Avid Dancer (Jacob Summers) with these thoughts, and we wrote the rest together."
  • Ben H. Allen, who played on Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere album, produced this track. He has also worked with Kaiser Chiefs, Walk the Moon and Animal Collective.
  • There are many different kinds of chemicals, including those that naturally occur in our systems. This gives the song layers, which is what Bossley had in mind. "I like that the song goes on to explore the 'mixed emotions' about all of this," he said. "Not really telling anyone exactly what to think about it. All of my favourite songs are open to interpretation, and we did our best to keep it intentionally open-ended."
  • The video was done by Joseph Wallace at Hangar Puppet Animation Studio in Bristol, UK. It finds Bossley traveling through a surreal animated realm in the tradition of Alice In Wonderland.

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