the main thing i know about pheonix: they’re french. basically, i know almost nothing about them. what i do know is that “Lisztomania” is one of the strangest titles i’ve ever seen for a song, and it refers to the hysterical fan frenzy towards composer franz liszt in the 1800s, akin to the fan frenzy seen with the beatles in the 1960s, which was similarly called Beatlemania. an even more modern comparison would be k-pop stans today. what made Lisztomania interesting was the fact that this hysteria from fans was almost unprecedented… i mean, how often do you see people try to collect locks of hair from a classical composer? true fact, by the way.
anyways, “Lisztomania” by pheonix strikes a good balance between typical summer hit song and quirky indie pop. the lyrics are pretty abstract, maybe even nonsensical- i can’t figure out what they’re supposed to mean after half an hour of staring, but they seem to be about some kind of disillusionment with love since thomas mars repeats ‘disgust’ multiple times throughout the song. there isn’t much when it comes to the guitars, as expected, until you get to the chorus, which has this sweet, exuberant riff. notably, everything seems to stop as soon as the song gets to the chorus, or whenever mars says “lisztomania”, which is interesting, because i normally expect a chorus to be explosive straightaway. am i overanalyzing this? yes.
my favorite section has to be the little instrumental part at 3:08, just a nice little bite of surreal synth improvisation (that’s what it sounds like) before it returns to the chorus. i wish this section could’ve been a little more extended, but for a pop song, this is already pretty long at around four minutes. and that’s only the studio version- i’m not sure how the radio version cuts down on the length.
give it a listen if you haven’t already!
q-street 