Silly Rabbit, Riffs Are For Kids

If you’ve met me, it’ll come as no shock that Sonic the Hedgehog was very formative to my sense of self. Desperate for some pasteurized brand of Cool to keep me from self-reflection and bullying, I turned to the namesake of every hedgehog adopted between 1991 and 2009. I begged my parents for a subscription to the Sonic comic books. I Naruto-ran around the playground back when it was Sonic-running. For my sixth birthday my mom taped pictures of Sonic to blue solo cups and found blue Mickey-Mouse shaped balloons at the dollar-store because they were close enough.

Sonic is an ascended cereal box mascot. He is cool because being a hero is no big deal to him. Saving the world is just kind of something he does in his free time. The Fastest Thing On Two Legs, along with legendary lemur, Zoboomafoo, were my imaginary friends. On long rides in the car, I would picture them racing beside us, being cool as shit and my friends.

I swear I had real friends growing up.

My first friend was my neighbor, Jeremy. My parents were skeptical of these new-fangled video game things, but Jeremy’s parents were not, and I went next door to play GameCube every chance I got. The most important game to me? Sonic Adventure 2: Battle.

It’s not good. In fact, it’s generally regarded as an offensively bad game.

However, it introduced me to two very important things: Shadow the Hedgehog and Crush 40.

Bear with me for a moment while I unpack the first.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a semi-humanoid hedgehog with black and red coloring who uses The Chaos Emeralds to stop time, therefore making him gasp! faster than Sonic. He’s the Sith Sonic; one of the primary antagonists until he makes a heel/face turn and teams up with the Blue Blur.

Since his arrival, Shadow has been a mainstay in the series going on twenty years. He even got his own eponymous installment in 2005 when edgelord garbage was all the rage. Revenge of the Sith had just come out too, so I blame both Anakin Skywalker and Shadow for my kneejerk impulse to say, “I can fix him.” Prince Zuko hadn’t redirected lightning at Fire Lord Ozai quite yet, so all this redemption-arc desire was still latent and misunderstood in my mind.

Crush 40 needed no explanation.

I loved their music instantly. I had a handheld Panasonic tape recorder and a single cassette onto which I recorded every song of theirs, straight from the TV speakers. Composer Jun Senoue and singer Johnny Gioeli penned the themes for most of the 3D Sonic games, including Adventure 2: Battle and Shadow the Hedgehog. If you’re a Sonic fan, or simply of a certain age and place, you might recognize their biggest numbers, “Live & Learn” and “Open Your Heart”—soaring hard rock headbangers that would make Spinal Tap proud. Even if you’ve never played a Sonic game in your life, you’d listen to about three seconds of Crush 40’s music and agree, “Yeah that sounds about right for an anthropomorphic hedgehog who runs at mach speed.”

The history of music in Sonic games is fascinating. Michael Jackson contributed to the earliest games’ soundtracks, because Sega wanted shit that sounded Good and Cool to The Kids. Now I’m not saying the King of Pop isn’t perennial, but even by the 90s his star had started its descent. It’s an odd if not entirely incorrect choice that produced some real bops. Now, Senoue got involved in making Sonic music in 1994, back when it was all chiptunes and midis. In 1998, he linked up with Gioeli for their first collaboration. They sounded more like 80s hair metal than their post-grunge contemporaries. If we’re to get cynical about how and why this music was chosen for a corporation’s multi-million-dollar flagship video game franchise, we might say the executives were a bit too old to know what The Youth actually listened to. If someone at Sega really had their finger on the pulse of things Creed or Hinder would’ve soundtracked Sonic. I’d say “can you imagine?” but the only thing more powerful than imagination is early YouTube, which was lousy with Sonic AMVs set to those bands.

Instead, we got Crush 40, who are so naked about their influences and intentions its jarring. Rock that’s all distortion and ambition. Songs to crash your car to. My understanding of the situation, imagined or real, is someone high up at Sega just trusts Senoue with their life and gives Crush 40 free range. Gioeli admits he doesn’t even play video games, just watches some clips before writing lyrics. He’s the goddam John Williams of Sonic. (Star Wars and Sonic are also akin in that the only thing their fans agree on is the music.) Sure, it might not be hard to summarize the games’ prevailing theme—Go Fast—but there’s a real heart to his delivery that can’t be faked.

Recently I listened to a mashup of “Everlong” and “Mr. Brightside”, and my main takeaway: the instrumental track to one of the Foo Fighters’s biggest hits is boring as hell. No disrespect to the Foo Fighters, whose music I enjoy as a vehicle for Dave Grohl’s shouting. There’s Dad Rock, and then there’s Divorced Dad Rock. By contrast, Crush 40’s shouting is a vehicle for Senoue to get off these sweet riffs.

Finally, we return to this essay’s impetus, the theme song for Shadow the Hedgehog: “I Am…All Of Me.” Off the bat, an ellipses in the title? Is this a text from my dad? Amazing. Looking camp right in the eye. The song takes a heavy metal spin on the Crush 40 cliché. The guitars are tuned way down, played through what sounds like a dumpster wherein several raccoon families cohabitate. This shit is Dark, a distinct shift in subject matter. Not our fleetfooted hero, but a gun-toting, ass-kicking antihero. Seriously, watch the game’s opening and try to put yourself in a ten-year old’s shoes. Is this not as ecstatic as it is absurd? The riff is so chunky it’s a damn shame when it falls away in the verse. The vocals got that walkie-talkie special on them. The lyrics are decidedly darker than 40’s usual fair. Gioeli’s ability to somehow rhyme “black-hearted evil” with “brave-hearted hero” is pure Pazaak.

Many of Senoue’s compositions feature a popping bassline, which add great texture and excitement to the chugging leads. The bass on “All Of Me” is much cleaner than the guitars, and it stands out in the mix. This contrast amplifies the tension built in the verses and pre-chorus, where the lead and bass battle; the former drones sustained chords, the latter runs a mile a minute. Forgive the pun, but the composition suggests some sonic depths, not unlike the hidden layers of our pincushion protagonist. The drum machine paired with the live kit also makes for a heavy industrial sound. This is rock as miniature symphony, in the traditions of The Who and Guns N’ Roses. Eschewing entirely the popular minimalism of their own day, Crush 40’s music is multilayered.

Surprisingly, the song lacks the genre and band’s calling card: a guitar solo. This strikes its own note: such a solo is a triumph, a reach for the heavens, but this song is concerned with failure and the manic energy of one’s potential evil. A guitar solo here would spoil the song’s central tension: will the subject be a hero or a villain? (Yes, I know it’s a fucking cartoon hedgehog, hold on a second, ok?) Heroes get solos, villains get breakdowns. Compare this to “The Imperial March” where almost every instrument plays the melody, thickening it into a wall of sound. Evil, music tells us, is a force that bends all around to its beat. Good stands above the din: singular. Interesting again that the ever-underestimated bass is the standout instrument.

Shadow the Hedgehog has a choose-your-own-adventure series of endings. You can save or destroy the world, with a few minor variations. This type of storytelling in video games was eventually perfected in Fallout: New Vegas and Dishonored, and thoroughly mauled in grim and stupid ways by countless other titles. By slogging through each of the browbeating storylines, you eventually unlock the Real Ending, which is Shadow’s apotheosis as A True Hero. You can’t actually kill anyone in Shadow the Hedgehog despite shooting people with literal guns—they just kind of get knocked out like Pokémon. Shadow’s redemption therefore isn’t a great mental or moral leap. And as kids we’re not really on the line for any major crimes, and so forgiveness seems simple. Despite all its needlessly melodramatic grimdark edgelord bullshit, the redemption arc is so compelling. It’s biblical, baby.

I do not think humans (and, I guess, hedgehogs) are inherently evil at all. I do not think we would’ve made it this far as a species if we were hardwired for hatred and destruction. We do however live in terribly exploitative systems that encourage and reward antisocial behavior. The struggle of Shadow the Hedgehog, and dare I say all humans, is with the capacity for evil within us. If Sonic is cool because he saves the world like it’s nothing, then Shadow’s allure lies in choosing to save the world, choosing to do good, even when evil seems profitable.

Kids really hate being underestimated. They hate it when they’re not taken seriously. I was drawn to Shadow because he was misunderstood and underestimated in the same way a child is. Adults expect little of children. (Actually, adults expect a lot, but you know what I mean—adults expect kids to be incapable dependents.) Sure, the power fantasy of destroying the world might appeal to certain disaffected youth, but by forsaking his evil origins Shadow rises to superhero status. The audience assumes he is a villain, and he proves them wrong. That is an intoxicating prospect to a child. How badly we want to be ourselves in spite of others’ expectations.

“I Am…All Of Me” is a subtle declaration, if you can believe it, of self-acceptance. I am not always the person (or, sigh, hedgehog) I want to be, but I will not stop trying, and you’re going to have to live with it.

What music from a video game can immediately transport you there? Did you expect this to be my longest newsletter yet? Hit me back, I’m bored.