Songs I Woke Up To: Daði Freyr (Daði & Gagnamagnið) - Think About Things

Hello! And welcome to the very first edition of Songs I Woke Up To, where I tell you about the song that I woke up today. To clarify, I don't mean the song that was playing on a radio or phone when I woke up, I mean the song that was already blasting away on repeat in the back of my brain before I even opened my eyes.

I don't know why this happens, but it's been this way for me for years. Somewhere around my late teens or early twenties, my mind decided that instead of any sort of inner monologue, my waking hours would be filled with whatever tune felt right to them, and that it would all start while I myself am still asleep.

Now, I've decided that instead of just bobbing my head around aimlessly in my kitchen while making coffee and getting my daughter ready for school, I'll make it a problem for all of you by writing about it on the internet. So with all that, let's dive right into "Think About Things" by Daði Freyr (or Daði & Gagnamagnið).

For anyone who doesn't know Daði Freyr Pétursson, Daði Freyr, or more simply Daði, the man is an absolute gem of a human being and an exceptionally talented musician and composer. "Think About Things" was the breakthrough hit for him and his band, Gagnamagnið, who are named after the fictional band they performed as during the Icelandic music contest, Söngvakeppnin. In fact, "Think About Things" was set to be Iceland's entry into the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest, only for the COVID-19 pandemic to put a halt to the event entirely. Much like the majority of his music and music videos, Daði Freyr evokes a whimsical, charming, Icelandic coolness that melds '80s synth with '70s grooves and pop music sensibilities ripped right out of the '90s. All in all, Daði Freyr & Gagnamagnið are everything that the typical Millennial could look for in their next band-of-the-month, and "Think About Things" is just the kind of song that listeners will play on repeat until they decide they hate it for the next eight-to-fourteen weeks of their lives.

As far as "Think About Things" itself goes, the song is everything that a listener could want from an Icelandic Eurovision nominee. "Think About Things" lulls listeners into a sense of calm with Daði's deep, bassy voice, powerful synth, and soft, almost hushed voices of backup singers Sigrún Birna Pétursdóttir and Hulda Kristín Kolbrúnardóttir. Before long, "Think About Things" gets into full swing, offering a tonal shift that is as welcome as it is abrupt. Over a runtime of less than three minutes, "Think About Things" goes from something akin to a Daft Punk intro to its own specific breed of epic pop lullaby. This same kind of tonal shift takes place again during and after the song's bridge, which harkens back to a particular kind of faux-'80s styling that was predominant and popular throughout the mid-2000s. All changes in tempo are ones that listeners can ease through rather than being decisively thrust into a new direction, and really, it is that sense of ease and calm that runs through every beat of "Think About Things" and right back to Daði himself that makes the song not just so catchy, but so important to myself and a whole lot of other quickly aging Millennials.

When "Think About Things" came out, I was still less than a year into having moved from Houston to Montreal, with a newborn who had just gone through major open heart surgery, and a crazy new virus was just around the corner. My daughter, less than a year old, was well into her pop and EDM phase, and refused to be content with just about anything else. "Think About Things" fit her musical disposition perfectly at the time, but more importantly, it spoke to me as a new father. "Think About Things" itself is a letter to Daði's daughter, who is just a couple of months younger than my own. Everything that Daði sings in "Think About Things is something that I didn't know I couldn't find the words to tell my daughter. As he himself described them, the lyrics to "Think About Things" were "the most personal" he had ever written, and I could (and still can) feel it. That song came into my life at exactly the right time, just as I'm sure Daði felt that the song came out of his mind and heart at exactly the right time for him. All of that just makes "Think About Things" that much more profound to me, personally, which maybe shouldn't factor too much into anyone else's opinion of it, yet is still a neat little factoid if nothing else.

Also there's the music video. Oh, the music video.

At this point, the music video for "Think About Things" is easily more famous than the song itself, and for good reason. The entirety of the music video is either pulled from one of the most perfect cuts Daði could come up with or inspired by ubiquitous experiences like small children performing for their families during holiday get-togethers. It is this exact scenario that sets up the music video, as a young girl finishes her recorder solo and makes way for Daði and the rest of Gagnamagnið to take center stage as it were. Within seconds of beginning their performance, previously unseen lights and stage effects appear, with the walls of the home themselves eventually giving way for over a dozen backup dancers to join in the unexpected DIY pop epic. All things considered, the music video for "Think About Things" is probably more fun than the song it was crafted for, and considering how much work the crew put in to creating fake instruments inspired by the Brett Domino Trio and choreographing an elaborately mundane dance number, that's more than reasonable.

"Think About Things" maybe isn't the perfect song to wake up with already playing in my head, but I'm not complaining about it. As a whole, "Think About Things" is an easy 8/10 single from a 10/10 musician who just so happens to be a 10/10 human being from what I can tell, which certainly doesn't hurt.

Well, I guess this is where I'm leaving things off for now. We'll just have to see whether this becomes a regular, semi-regular, or one-time feature for me, but if you liked what you read here, feel free to check out my Vocal profile for more. And, if you're a fan of pop culture nonsense, you can find me writing plenty of that over at CBR. Until next time, stay groovy, y'all, and may the disco ball of your dreams never stop spinning.