The Hymn Of Axicom

Give this pretty song a quick listen.

Vienna Teng Aims 05 The Hymn of Acxiom

If you go to YouTube and look at the related videos, you'll see that it has generated a bunch of YouTube covers by school choirs. For obvious reasons, it's popular with choirs - even though all those harmonies in the song are the same person, multi-tracked.

OK, but what's the song about?

Here are the lyrics:

Somebody hears you. you know that. you know that.
Somebody hears you. you know that inside.
Someone is learning the colors of all your moods, to
(say just the right thing and) show that you’re understood.
Here you’re known.

Leave your life open. you don’t have. you don’t have.
Leave your life open. you don’t have to hide.
Someone is gathering every crumb you drop, these
(mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot.
Keep them all.

Let our formulas find your soul.
We’ll divine your artesian source (in your mind),
Marshal feed and force (our machines will)
To design you a perfect love—
Or (better still) a perfect lust.
O how glorious, glorious: a brand new need is born.

Now we possess you. you’ll own that. you’ll own that.
Now we possess you. you’ll own that in time.
Now we will build you an endlessly upward world,
(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth.

Is that wrong?
Isn’t this what you want?
Amen.

It starts out like a pretty standard sappy love song. But once you get past the first couple of verses, you might suspect that this might not be a song about hope and love and your precious fragile soul. It gets a lot darker: sounds almost jealous, possessive, sinister. But there's something else in there: formulas, design, need, lust, pocket, your worth. What's all that about?

It's a song about data mining and targeted advertising. Axicom makes software that reads your online email and figures out what you like so that advertisers can show you ads. This song was written by a former Axicom employee.

So, is the joke on the choirs who maybe don't know what they're singing about - they just think it's a love song with pretty harmonies? Or is the joke on audiences who don't have time to figure out what the lyrics are really about and think they're just hearing a pretty love song? Or is the joke on Axicon? Or is it on all of us who are willing to put our correspondence through Axicom's algorithms?

via David Byrne.