Tuesday Tracks: “Atomized” by Andrew Bird
Bird’s newest single traverses across the planes of time and genre with its commentary on our digital world.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “atomize” as “to divide into small units.” Indie-rock singer-songwriter Andrew Bird explores this idea — “the proof that things fall apart” — in his latest single “Atomized.” Despite coming across as upbeat and danceable, “Atomized” reveals itself to be a deeply reflective commentary on how the fragmentation of society has now progressed to individual people becoming fractured due to technology.
In an interview with NME Magazine, Bird stated that with “Atomized” he seeks to follow the thread of social criticism that Joan Didion explored in her literary career, mainly in the collection of essays entitled “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” title deriving from a W.B. Yeats’ poem called “The Second Coming.” As stated by Mary Spencer in the National Review, in the essays Didion examines “the roots from which American civil life has decayed” though her “thoughtful tracing of disparate lives.” Just as Didion updated the writing of Yeats to examine the counterculture of the “fractious ‘60s,” Bird in turn modernizes Didion to apply to our “pixelated present where it’s not just society that is getting atomized but the self that is being broken apart and scattered,” he said.
Bird emphasizes the lyrical message of “Atomized” with buoyant and pixelated instrumentation. The song begins with a few bars that feature only a drum beat, drawing in the listener with its rhythmic groove. The other instrumental components are introduced on an upbeat, bringing a sudden cascade of strings and the clear tone of Bird’s characteristic whistle. A jaunty, folk-inspired tune that’s plucked out on the violin materializes as Bird sings the first verse: “They’re gonna try to get a rise/To unseat you/They’ll demagnetize your poles/And you know they’re gonna try to delete you/So now you’re atomized, unwhole.”
The lyrics seem to speak to how the rise of social media has made possible the careful curation of one’s identity online. In the digital age, people are reduced down to only a fragment of who they are as a whole, which is done both intentionally and unintentionally, as with cancel culture. A term that began in the wake of the #MeToo movement, cancel culture has taken on a roaring life of its own with some defending the act of “cancelling” as “an expression of agency” and “free speech,” while others criticize it for being dehumanizing in its denial of allowing “the cancelled individual the most basic of human opportunities: to apologise and to be absolved.”
Bird addresses the lack of nuance in cancel culture and the subsequent feeling of isolation that comes with “cancelling” in the pre-chorus of the track, singing: “You know better start making your apologies/Stop blaming technology, yeah/Blaming technology, oh/May you please, may you start making your apologies, oh/Blaming technology, yeah/Blaming technology, oh.” The repeated “Stop blaming technology” and “start making your apologies” are sung in a higher pitch, evoking the sense of desperation and lack of control that comes with being cancelled. These lyrics also speak to how cancelling is a phenomenon made possible only by social media, and how the greater degree of accountability that the internet has provided is also the cause of increased societal polarization.
In the chorus, Bird pivots to the classical music cannon by borrowing a melody from the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. This musical line is much more linear than the prior upbeat pizzicato, creating a juxtaposition and melding of not only musical style but time as well. There is a clash between traditional and modern, and what is already established and what is still yet to be seen. This musical clash underscores the lyrical message of “Atomized”: Societal fragmentation is a process already known to us by way of W.B. Yeats and Joan Didion, but the digital age has caused a new branch of fragmentation by breaking up individual identity.
You can stream “Atomized” on Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, and everywhere else. Andrew Bird is also going on a co-headlining tour this summer with Iron & Wine, for which you can find tickets here.
