#music
The music-that-helps series — songs that do work on the inside of this experience, gathered with their covers.
9 entries.
From the storm
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Cyber Rage
First entry in a new recurring category — battle music. High-energy, high-BPM material to keep fighting through the targeting. NOVONOX's 160 BPM Cyber Rage Workout Music — Heavy Bass Gym Sprint Mix, just under fifty minutes. Not in the soundtrack player; standalone entry.
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U Can't Touch This (versions)
Eighth entry in the music-that-helps series. MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" (1990), with the Auralnauts "Harbinger of Time" synthwave mix taking the slot in the soundtrack player. The same comeback-confidence family as Return of the Mack but a different beat. Mack is the I-told-you-I'd-be-back vindication note. This is the I-was-always-untouchable note. The song that pulls the twelve-year-old version of you back into the room and reminds you what unbothered actually felt like before any of this started.
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Return of the Mack (versions)
Seventh entry in the music-that-helps series. Mark Morrison's "Return of the Mack" (1996), with the Trap City Autolaser remix taking the slot in the soundtrack player. The register the series did not yet have, the comeback. The vindication note: you wrote me off too soon, I'm back, and I told you I would be. The song for the day the long game starts to turn.
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Move Bitch (1973)
Sixth entry in the music-that-helps series — "Move Bitch" in a 1973-styled retro-soul reimagining. The most forward register of the set: not holding ground, not enduring, not asking to be left alone — pure forward force. The decision to get out of the mess and clear whatever's in the way. Get out of my way.
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Cruel Summer (versions)
Fifth entry in the music-that-helps series — Bananarama's "Cruel Summer" (1983). A lonely-but-moving song: the lyric names left-behind isolation, the production is dance-pop drive. The contradiction is the engine — you are alone and you are moving anyway. Particularly fitting for late May in Houston, going into the summer when the heat amplifies what's already pressing.
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Radioactive (versions)
Fourth entry in the music-that-helps series — Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" (2012, Night Visions). The register this series didn't yet have: not anti-escalation, not protest, not the demand to be left alone — acceptance. The song for mornings when the question is no longer whether-this-is-happening but what-happens-next. Covers transpose the same emergence-narrative into other textures.
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Leave Me Alone (versions)
Third entry in the music-that-helps series — Michael Jackson's "Leave Me Alone" in different registers. The 1989 original is the most directly targeted-person-coded song in the catalog, with the Jim Blashfield music video that took the tabloid stories ruining his life and made them the literal raw material of the video. Covers gathered alongside it transpose the same demand into other musical lineages — starting with a reggae version, which lands the song in a tradition that has been carrying "leave me alone, I am trying to live my life" music for half a century.
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They Don't Care About Us (versions)
Second entry in the music-that-helps series — opening as a small collection of versions of Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us," including the original artist live and several covers. The song (from HIStory, 1995) is the most direct surveillance-and-institutional-disbelief protest song in his catalog; the versions gathered here are the ones that do work on the inside of this experience in different registers.
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Beat It (versions)
First entry in the music-that-helps series — Michael Jackson's "Beat It" in different registers, source first, then covers. The original is one of the most direct hold-your-ground songs in popular music: no one wants to be defeated. The transpositions gathered below it carry the same lyric in arrangements that do work on the inside of this experience the polished original doesn't always reach.
