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cover art: Anais Ahmadi
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Space Girl 2 Track 1 of Heart Songs LINKS             ABOUT THIS SONG release date: March 27, 2021 Space Girl 2 shares the heart and soul of Frances Forever's hit song, Space Girl. It's the love story of Earth Boy and Space Girl, a roller coaster of story and music with exhilarating orbital hookups, commitment issues, and intense emotions. And popping up throughout is the hauntingly beautiful voice of the mysterious alien, Space Girl. Space Girl 2 is the love story of Earth Boy and Space Girl, with exhilarating orbital hookups, commitment issues, and intense emotions. And popping up here and there throughout the song is the spirit-like, hauntingly beautiful voice of the mysterious alien, Space Girl, who "sings just like a siren" from the ancient Greek myths. As a song, Space Girl 2 shares the heart and soul of Space Girl, but changes lyrics, rearranges some elements, drops other elements, and adds many new elements — most notably, the "Dream Bridge" in the middle of the song, which is also Space Girl 2’s emotional peak. Space Girl 2 is a veritable roller coaster of story and music! It straps you in at the outset, and doesn't release you until the very end of the ride, with a lot of fun along the way. The story has Space Girl and Earth Boy blasting off into outer space in her ship; then it drifts over to a dream island; then it returns to Earth Boy blasting off into space in his own ship in search of Space Girl and a galaxy with a magical, island-like planet, where they can live together happily. The music moves from the familiar pop melodies of Space Girl (complemented by Earth Boy's further thoughts, expressed as rap commentary); to a "dream" interlude with an orchestral arrangement; and then back again to those pop melodies. |
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LYRICS SPACE GIRL 2 Next Track: |
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THE CONTINUING STORY OF SPACE GIRL. . .
Does Earth Boy find Space Girl? Is there a happy ending? Are they alone on an island together, in a distant galaxy? Listen to the song all the way to its very end, and judge for yourself. . . THE END (for now. Who knows. . . there may be further chapters in the continuing adventures of Space Girl!) |
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MAKING SPACE GIRL 2 This section is a kind of "songwriter's diary". It’s about how I got from Space Girl to Space Girl 2. While I am writing this mainly with other songwriters in mind as the readers, anybody who loves music might find my description of my songwriting process interesting, the way we all enjoy "The Making Of" videos for big box office movies. But you can always skip to the next section too! In a recent interview, Frances Forever (who prefers the pronouns “they/them/their”) talked about their thinking on doing covers: "What I sort of figured out was that the best thing to do is to make the cover as different from the original as possible and more like your own style of music. That's what I enjoy the most is taking a song that I love and changing some melodies or changing what the instrument is that I'm playing and making it sound a little different. That's what I like to do." Interestingly, that's exactly how it turned out for me! I intentionally tried to preserve "the heart and soul" of the original song; but the new version probably shouldn't even be called a "cover" because it adds new parts, removes other parts, rearranges parts, and changes lyrics. That's why I call it Space Girl 2 (rather than Space Girl or some completely different title): to try to reflect in the title that this new version has both similarities and differences. abbreviated verse 1 (2 lines) → chorus → extended/modified verse 2 → chorus → extended "spectral slowdown" (1 min 33 sec)
The structure I envisioned for Space Girl 2 was more like this: verse 1 (4 lines) → chorus → verse 2 → "spectral slowdown" bridge (1 min) → chorus → verse 3
Here the biggest change is to have the song "slow down” for a period in the middle of the song (by moving what had been the extended "slow down" at the end of the song to the middle, but shortened to just one minute), and then pick up the energy again for the close of the song. |
| The "Space Girl dance challenge" is simple and cute. First, cross your arms. Then slide them down. Pat your body down four times. Next, use your fingers to make O's over your eyes. Cross, then uncross your arms and roll your arms down, then up. Look left. Look right. Stroke your face. Hug yourself. Cover your hands with your mouth and blow a kiss. Yes, it's really that simple! |
| So I thought: let's build on that, and make the entire song even more danceable by making the chorus more danceable. So I changed the bass line of the chorus accordingly. The bass line for the verse and the bass line for the chorus now have similar features and complement each other:
verse bass line (played a few times) I also emphasized the bass on the verse by having the other instruments fade in under the already loud bass and drums, just before I start singing the verse. Because the most familiar part of Space Girl was the part used for the TikTok dance (the beginning of the second verse about the "lunar eclipse"), I moved that to the front of the song. I felt the song needed some further elaboration of "lunar eclipse", and that's how the rap commentaries originated, the first one — "She's such a rare event!" — explaining the "lunar eclipse" metaphor. Having made that addition, the next line, "Earth Boy is really missing your lips" now makes sense, because she apparently doesn't stop by very often (being a "rare event"). In extending the opening verse from two lines to a more traditional four lines, I created two new lines of melody, as well as two more lines of lyric. There's something I really like about four-line verses, in terms of providing enough time to develop and to close. I already had my first two lines — which rhymed — and I decided it would be fun to make all four lines rhyme. I also continued the rap commentary, and was delighted to find a perfect rhyme for the commentary too: “She's such a rare event; I think she's heaven-sent." Space Girl, you're like a lunar eclipse.
(She's such a rare event.) Earth Boy is really missing your lips. (I think she's heaven-sent!) Now come on down to earth and shaka shaka shaka your hips. (Those lips. . . Those hips. . . ) I hold you tight, Space Girl as you take me on a galaxy trip. As soon as I added that last line, "as you take me on a galaxy trip", the idea of the "Blast Off" Bridge — in which we hear a countdown and the sound of a rocket blast-off — sprang to mind, and became a new part of the song, between the first verse and the chorus. I then began re-writing the chorus. "Girl, are you a Cancer? Cause you make me cry" is an expression of deep feeling, but not in a way that I myself would tend to express it in words. So I changed it to words I would write: "Girl, we're flying so high. . . and my heart goes 'Wow!'" I then came up with a unique way of singing the chorus — with a heavy vibrato — which, for me, was also a way to amplify my expression of feeling. I ended up changing "We kiss or dance in the sky" to "We kiss and dance above the sky". Obviously it's a matter of perspective: The moon is up "in the sky". If I'm looking up at their ship in orbit, I'm seeing them "in the sky". But if I'm the one in the rocket ship in orbit, then I myself am "above" the sky. And I really loved that unusual phrase, "above the sky"! I knew it would blow people's minds for a few seconds, until they suddenly had the "Aha!" insight of how that strange phrase could actually make sense. And when I developed the cover art for the song, I wanted the cover to be primarily a depiction of that phrase, "we kiss and dance above the sky" by showing Space Girl and Earth Boy floating in her ship, holding hands, with the earth down below seen through a window behind them. (Artist Anais Ahmadi did a wonderful anime rendering of what I had in mind. . . Thanks, Nani!)
Creating the bridge in the middle of the song is probably the most interesting part of this songwriting diary! My original intention was to take the extended close of the original Space Girl, and have a shortened version of it serve as the middle bridge. So version 1 of the middle bridge was exactly that: original "Dream" Bridge for Space Girl 2
If you listen carefully to Space Girl, you can hear an ocean-like (white noise) sound growing in the background of the extended close. It’s rather subtle. But I liked it so much that I made it the much more obvious context for the entire bridge, with real ocean sounds and sea gulls. Since Earth Girl "dreaming" about Space Girl is a big theme in Space Girl, I decided to make dreaming the focus of the bridge. Instead of "I hope you play this song some day", I changed it to "I hope you dream this dream some day" — in other words, the problem is not that Earth Girl is always dreaming about Space Girl; the problem is that it's not clear whether Space Girl shares Earth Girl's dream. Once I made "dreaming" the focus of the lyrics, it was natural to make the entire bridge (which I now called the "Dream Bridge") "dreamlike", with those dreamy ocean sounds, and the absence of any percussion. Also in line with the "dream": a steady build in intensity/volume throughout the dream that is leading to the alarm clock going off, and an (unwanted) awakening from the dream. We are alone on an island. . .
The wind is sighing in her hair. . . And Susan sings just like a siren. . . Then she disappears into the air. . . And the gulls are crying no. And I am dying — Don't go! Don't go! Don't go. Suddenly it became obvious: that bridge was perfect for Space Girl 2! And I had been unconsciously drawing from it, as I was creating the bridge. But just using it directly felt even better. Instead of just talking about Earth Boy dreaming about Space Girl, and hoping she would share his dream with him, I could actually make the bridge be the dream itself! And then Verse 2 could be the part that talks about dreaming and sharing the dream. This felt so right, that I began to feel that that bridge, which I had originally associated with a different song, was actually meant to go in this song somehow, even though I had written it years before. It was so easy to just change the lyrics from "and Susan sings just like a siren" to "and Space Girl sings just like a siren" — it even remained alliterative! (all "s" words.) And this bridge allowed the listener to really feel the pain Earth Boy felt each time Space Girl would drift away ("Don't go!", he cries), and leave him uncertain about their relationship. Indeed, Space Girl singing “like a siren”, followed by Earth Boy's cries of "Don't go” are the emotional peak of the entire song. I had guitar arpeggios in the original "Dream Bridge" of The Ballad of the Working Man, so I kept them in. And I kept in the idea of the build of classical instruments as the "Dream Bridge" progressed, starting with viola; adding violin; then flute; then clarinet. Then the alarm clock and waking up from the dream. And like my earlier version of the bridge, this one was just under a minute long. Having completed the "Dream Bridge", it was easy to go back to Verse 2 now, and write lyrics about "dreaming" that would provide the set-up for the "Dream Bridge": Space Girl, you keep on drifting away.
(Black hole keeps pulling on you.) Earth Boy is gonna beg you to stay. (I'm always dreaming 'bout you!) Now show me that our love is as real as it seems. . . (Help me stop dreaming 'bout you.) Tell me you are real, girl — you are more than a dream. The "Dream Bridge" was followed by a repeat of the chorus. That left only one thing for me to create: the final verse (verse 3), which ran from the end of the chorus to the end of the song. Verse 3 wrote itself, in some sense, as I considered the "big picture": Earth Boy and Space Girl did have great times together! The chorus made that clear. It's just that those times didn't last, and Space Girl would "drift away" for extended periods, leaving Earth Boy wondering whether their love was real or a dream. So the final verse is the resolution to this dilemma: Earth Boy is committed to making their relationship work out. He's certain it will. . . he just needs to be persistent, until their "stars align" and they find themselves in the "galaxy that will be ours". And he needs to be proactive, and not just wait passively for her return. So he builds a rocket ship, and sets off (you can hear his rocket engine kicking in) with high hopes on his mission of love: Some day,
our stars are gonna align. Till then, now and then will be fine. I built a ship to fly me as I look for you among the stars. I'm looking for my Space Girl and the galaxy that will be ours. will be ours. will be ours! And that's the end of the song! Oh, one final note: at the very end of the song, you can hear two voices jubilantly singing that final "Will be ours!" together. . . So maybe — just maybe — Earth Boy and Space Girl finally found that "galaxy that will be ours", and lived Earth Boy’s/Earth Girl's dream together. ADDITIONAL NOTES Includes the following sections:
Space Girl as a viral hit. (Last updated: August 29, 2021.) Space Girl was and is an indie pop hit from Frances Forever in the time of the pandemic. It was originally released on March 27, 2020. It took a while to catch on fire, but by December, 2020, it was hitting Spotify viral charts in 49 countries, going #1 in the US and #2 globally, propelled by a popular TikTok Space Girl dance trend (that had been created on October 14, 2020). It also made it onto the Billboard Hot Rock & Alternative top 50 chart. It entered the Billboard chart at position 39 on December 12, 2020, climbed to position 27 on December 19, 2020, and remained on the Billboard chart for many weeks, finally falling off the chart on March 20, 2021. Space Girl has had over 1.1 billion plays on TikTok (!), more than 85 million streams on Spotify, over 4 million views on YouTube, and nearly 400,000 TikTok videos using its music. For anyone who hasn’t heard the original Space Girl yet, do go check it out here. It’s a fantastic song! I released Space Girl 2 on March 27, 2021, the one-year anniversary of the release of the original song. Happy Birthday, Space Girl! Perhaps Earth Boy becoming more proactive this time round is synchronous with our larger cultural "pandemic" context, of coming out of our long "lockdown" period of waiting and hoping, to getting out and about again. . . Writing lyrics with multiple interpretations. Is Space Girl 2 (and Space Girl) actually an intergalactic love story between a human being and a mysterious non-human space alien? Or is the "space" reference a metaphor for a love story that is actually about two human beings? I find this a really interesting question — and it impacted how I wrote Space Girl 2.
Space Girl's voice. I also wanted to bring Space Girl to life in my version by having her sing at certain places in the song. But I didn’t want it to be just another “female vocal”. I wanted it to be Space Girl, to feel like Space Girl. In this, I was guided by two things. The first was my line, “and Space Girl sings just like a siren.” In Greek mythology, sirens were supernatural beings (somewhere between humans and gods) that sang with hauntingly beautiful voices. So I wanted an incredibly pure voice that was hauntingly beautiful. I was fortunate to find just such a voice in Abby Strickland. She did a wonderful rendition of “Space Girl”, and I’m delighted to say she found singing the role of Space Girl “super fun”. The second thing guiding me was that Space Girl was not human; she was a mysterious space alien. So I wanted a way of mixing in her voice that would make it sound almost spirit-like, and in the background, as though she were in a different dimension. I had ideas for how to do that, but went looking for confirmation in the arrangements of existing songs. I did an extensive search, and had to go all the way back to 1975 to find something like what I had in mind — John Denver’s song, Fly Away, where Olivia Newton-John (spirit-like, in the background, dressed in white) sings with John Denver. In certain moments (like 2:02 and 2:36), her voice sounds exactly like what I was hearing in my head for Space Girl, and confirmed for me how I could actually accomplish this technically. An important note: the sirens in Greek mythology are sometimes depicted as malicious creatures, who lure sailors to their death by having their ships crash on the rocks as the sailors are entranced and diverted by the sirens’ voices. That is not at all what I have in mind with the line, “and Space Girl sings just like a siren”! I don’t imagine any maliciousness whatsoever in Space Girl. What I do have in mind is an alien being, a “siren” who is so hauntingly attractive in every way (including her voice) that (not by any intention on her part) even if she leaves and you never see her again, your days will be haunted by her memory for the rest of your life. Like the line in Space Girl: “If you were sucked into a black hole. . . I'd still spend my days dreaming 'bout you.” So that’s the spell she casts on you. Diabolus in musica. “Diabolus in musica” (Latin for “the devil in music”), also known as the tritone, is a particular pair of notes with a very mysterious sound and a fabled history in the history of music. These two notes were often considered so dissonant (when played together or one after the other) that they were avoided by medieval musicians, much like the devil. You can hear them in this audio clip: I first play the two notes by themselves several times. Then I play the guitar section where I use the tritone at the opening of the Dream Bridge: I’m alternating back and forth between the tritone (the most dissonant interval) and the fifth (one of the most “consonant” or harmonious intervals). I found this perfect for the transition between waking and dreaming. . . Once we’ve fully transitioned into “the dream”, I stop using the tritone. (More about the tritone here.) Seamless genre switching. From the perspective of musical arrangement, one of the most enjoyable things I did was to create a "Dream Bridge" in the middle of the song that was entirely classical in its arrangement, but in a way that was so seamless, hardly anyone would notice the genre switch. . . it would just feel like a single, integrated song. In actuality, though, all percussion has stopped, and the instrumentation is purely orchestral: acoustic guitar arpeggios replace percussion as the timekeeper; and various orchestral instruments join in, one by one: viola, violin, flute, and clarinet. Part of this was accomplished by a kind of "magic trick" with attention. Using the "diabolus in musica" device I described in the last section gets the listener to focus on that intriguing, transitional alternation between consonance and dissonance, and takes their attention away from the real transition that is occuring: the switch from pop-rock to classical. The section end is an arpeggiation that could have been lifted straight out of countless classical pieces from the time of Mozart onward: The switch back from classical to pop-rock is accomplished by a second "magic trick": the music comes to a dead halt, and all you hear is the alarm clock for a few seconds. That is sufficiently attention-diverting that the transition from classical back to pop-rock isn't even noticed. (Plus: the alarm clock is chiming at the same beat as the upcoming pop-rock section (and its percussion), so the alarm clock is subliminally priming the listener for the return to pop-rock with its rock beat. Zen and the art of song pausing. One wonderful aspect of the Zen tradition is its raising to consciousness the importance of the element of space. A famous example is Japanese Zen gardens, where, when arranging the garden, the space between the rocks is viewed as just as important as the rocks. I feel the same way about consciously creating significant or memorable "spaces" or pauses in songs. I created a few in Space Girl 2. They're easy to spot (and fairly evenly spaced), if you look at a waveform picture for the song (which tracks the ups and downs in the song's volume): 
These pauses don't necessarily mean all music comes to a stop — just much of it, to the point where the volume decrease is noticeable (as shown in the above waveform). In fact, the art of song pausing is not just to open up a space, but to decide what minimal/memorable music to put in the space, since the listener will be very focused on it, with nothing else going on. . . Something like the beautiful, circular patterns in the sandy space between the Zen garden rocks: 
Pause #2 is the transition from Verse 2 to the Dream Bridge, where I used the "diabolus in musica" (see last section) as the distinguishing musial feature of the pause/transition. The most dramatic pause is pause #3 — the pause in between the Dream Bridge and Verse 3 — where all that you hear is the alarm clock. This is immediately after the emotional high point of the song, so having a pause right then is very interesting psychologically — I say more about that in the next section. The remaining "spaces" are between the Chorus and the Verse (pause #1 between the Chorus and Verse 2, and pause #4 between the Chorus and Verse 3). Everything stops, except for very light (high hat) drumming and a violin. And the violin plays a sweet little tune — whose sweetness and poignancy you can really feel because nothing else is going on musically: The "feeling rush" space. Right at the end of the "Dream Bridge", which culminates in my singing "Don't Go!" and the associated intense emotions, I've created a space where all the music stops, and there is just the alarm clock beeping. The space is only a few seconds long. But every time I reach this point in the song, I have the experience that the intense feelings that have been building in the Dream Bridge suddenly rush in and fill the void. It seems to be a cognitive/psychological artifact of the space (the complete absence of music) itself. Maybe I'm the only one who experiences it that way! But it feels more like the opposite: that everyone, during that space, will feel something similar, because the brain is set up to do that, given the intensity of the built-up feeling, and the complete space for a few seconds: the feelings rush into the space as automatically as dammed water would suddenly rush into an empty space. (Maybe it would be even more intense if I removed the alarm clock too, and just made it complete silence. Or maybe there's something about the alarm clock sound that's aiding the "feeling rush". I'm not sure. . .) Well, I guess I'll have to wait on listeners to confirm this (or not). But I'd like to think I've invented a new musical/psychological innovation, something I'll call (for want of a better phrase) "the 'feeling rush' space". If it's real, it's an example of something I've always been fascinated by: objective art. (This is a concept pioneered by the spiritual teacher, George Gurdjieff.) We generally think of art (including music) as something which generates a subjective response, which could be different for each person. But the notion of "objective art" is that it is sometimes possible to design art in such a way that it produces the very same emotional response in everyone (or at least most people) experiencing that art. So someone walks into a certain chamber of an ancient Egyptian pyramid, and they automatically start weeping. Or someone reaches the "alarm clock" section of my song, and they automatically feel a rush of emotions. That kind of thing! The influence of TikTok on pop music. Allow me to play futurist for a moment. It is my strong sense that TikTok is going to have an immense, long-term impact on pop music over the next few years. We already see the beginnings of this insofar as a number of the biggest mainstream hits of the last year (e.g., Savage, Say So) have come prepackaged with accompanying TikTok challenges. TikTok has also provided a new path by which songs become known. For example, Space Girl first went viral on TikTok, which then enabled it to go viral on Spotify, and ultimately make it onto the Billboard charts. And there are many other songs that followed a similar launch trajectory. But the long-term impact of TikTok will be even greater. I believe it is beginning to shape the very sound and form of pop songs. TikTok was prescient in coining the word, “sound”, for its audio files. TikTok sounds are turning out to be free-form mash-ups of voices, songs (from many eras), and sound effects — any of which may be sped up or slowed down. Transitions (in sound and/or outfit) are common — the more dramatic, the more popular. We are still in an early phase where large numbers of amateur TikTok creators are very imaginative in which elements they use in their "sounds", but not necessarily very artful or musical in the way they combine these elements. Over the next few years, we are going to see an increase in artfulness, and with that, more and more mainstream songs (including at the Grammy level) are going to be “TikTokified” to one degree or another. Having made this prediction so confidently, I’m willing to put my neck on the line and pioneer what I’ve predicted. I’ve freely sprinkled Space Girl 2 with all kinds of TikTokian sound effects, from countdowns and rocket blast-offs, to ocean waves and sea gulls, to alarm clocks — but using artistry as I did so, especially in the synchronization of the timing. An obvious example is how the alarm clock rings at exactly the rhythm of the subsequent chorus. (“The gulls are crying ‘no’. . .” — Getting the gulls to cry on cue was, of course, the toughest challenge. :-) Because I wrestled so hard and long with this question, I believe the answer is “no”. I’ll now take the reader through some of the issues I wrestled with. The biggest issue was this: Should I even think of creating a heterosexual cover of Space Girl in the first place? In my worst nightmares, I imagined someone saying, “How dare you? That’s a pansexual song — a pansexual community anthem, even — and you’re ruining it by making it heterosexual!” But this imagined reaction went against my long-held feeling that anyone should be able to create a cover of any song. Legally, the answer is: yes you can — as long as you credit the songwriters, etc. (and all that that implies: including giving them royalties, etc., which of course I am doing). But I required myself to grapple with this question not merely from a legal standpoint but from a social and cultural viewpoint as well. Ultimately, I reached a simple answer: I’m not “ruining” anything because I’m creating a new, distinct song, Space Girl 2. The original Space Girl still exists, completely intact and unchanged! And there’s no reason to think that people who love it will stop loving it because of the release of my version. Anyone can still listen to it, and no one has to listen to my version. All I’ve done is expand the “Space Girl” universe so potentially even more people can enjoy these melodies and grooves. With that in mind, I will always be referring people back to Space Girl (as the source for Space Girl 2). I even carefully chose the name, Space Girl 2, so that, if someone runs across my version, never having heard the original, they will naturally say, “Space Girl 2 — I wonder what Space Girl 1 is like?” and go check it out as well. So the existence of my version will not in any way prevent newcomers to both from finding the original version. Even though I’d be very surprised if Space Girl 2 has anywhere close to the audience of Space Girl (covers/new versions almost never do as well as an original successful version), I took pains to make sure nothing about the timing of the release of my version could impact the continued success of Space Girl. For example, I discovered that Space Girl was on the Billboard Hot Rock/Alternative Top 50 Chart for many weeks. Seeing this, I intentionally waited until it was no longer on that chart before even thinking of releasing my version, so there would be no competition between the two versions on that chart (unlikely as that might be). I learned something from Frances Forever too, that helped. When asked how someone who disliked being referred to as “she” or “girl” could sing the character of “Earth Girl”, they replied, "It's become bigger than just me. I wrote the song before I came out as non-binary, and at the end it says, 'Space Girl and Earth Girl.' I thought about changing it, and then I was like, 'You know what? This isn't about me anymore. This is about everyone who relates to it, and I think that's really beautiful." I really like that view! Great songs do take on a life of their own. They are not single, they are like a tree, with many branches, which, in turn, can have branches. Over time, good, enduring songs have zillions of covers, some heard, most unheard (spontaneously sung by fans in the shower). They get translated into other languages. Words, ideas, genders, etc. can change or morph as they are introduced to new social communities. Some versions (for better or worse) might even accompany beer or car ads (in our commercialized world)! In some sense, a good song is not an “it” but a “them”, and all the potentially many versions of the song don’t even have to be consistent with each other. I’m reminded of Walt Whitman’s famous passage from Song of Myself: Do I contradict myself? * * * I’ve confessed to you my worst nightmare about Space Girl 2. So it’s only fair that I also share my fondest fantasy: Frances Forever loves Space Girl 2. (Remember how happy you were, Frances, to find out that Clairo liked your cover of Flamin Hot Cheetos?) They love the idea of extending the “Space Girl” universe to include more Space Girl versions, songs, and mythology. And they and Robin (the original “Space Girl”, and the creator of the TikTok dance to go with Space Girl) help me develop a TikTok dance for Space Girl 2. Well, I can dream, can’t I? |
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