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2019 The Midnight song (First single and track two from Monsters)
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America Online

America online - single.jpg
"America Online"
Single by The Midnight
from the album Monsters
ReleasedMay 13, 2019 (2019-05-13)
Length5:49
LabelCounter Records
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)Tim McEwan
Monsters track listing

Monsters

  1. "1991 (intro)"
  2. "America Online"
  3. "Dance With Somebody"
  4. "Seventeen"
  5. "Dream Away"
  6. "The Search for Ecco"
  7. "Prom Night"
  8. "Fire In The Sky"
  9. "Monsters"
  10. "Helvetica"
  11. "Brooklyn"
  12. "Deep Blue"
  13. "Night Skies"
  14. "City Dreams (interlude)"
  15. "Last Train"
The Midnight singles chronology
Arcade dreams - single.jpg
Arcade Dreams
(2018) 		America online - single.jpg
America Online
(2019) 		Deep blue - single.jpg
Deep Blue
(2020)

America Online[1] is a song by The Midnight. It is the first single and second track from their album Monsters. The single was released on May 13, 2019.[2]

The song was written by band members Tim McEwan and Tyler Lyle and produced by McEwan. It has a running time of five minutes and 49 seconds and is in the key of B minor.

During a tour stop in the Spring 2019 Tour about a month before the single's release, the band talked with NewRetroWave about America Online:[3]

As a kid you’re sort of [disconnected] from the world… But when you’re in your teenage years, everything is sort of inner-conflict, relationships, all happening at once. The tensions of romantic love, acceptance in groups and things like that. …it’s not a sunset right? It’s more of a sort of blog track. I love going on vaporwave track playlists on youtube. I love the low-grade, low-fi, bitcrushed sound – it’s like that but with a bit more of a cleaner palette, a cleaner mix. So, that one will set the tone. Tyler is definitely on it, but in a bit more of a…vocodery way.

In an interview with Magnetic Magazine after the release of Monsters, The Midnight further stated:[4]

Tim: This sets the tone for our album. We’re in the era of connectivity. Gone are the days of being a kid, riding around on bikes, exploring the world around you. You’re a teen now and your nights are spent online in your bedroom, logged onto chat rooms, while the door to your parents is shut and you are searching for your own identity.

Tyler: This track was basically done and we’d decided to do it as an instrumental, but at the last minute I decided to try and write something. By that time we knew what the album was about roughly. This became the premise of the record- is love necessarily reciprocal- is hate? What is intimacy without proximity? Are we really connected at the bottom of all of this, especially when “all of this” is mediated by so many layers that seem un-human.

According to McEwan, the synth used in the opening of America Online is Serum with EchoMelt 2 added to get the uneven tape jitter effect.[5] The vocoder used is a mix of VocalSynth 2 from iZotope and BitSpeek.

The date on the single artwork for America Online is August 6, 1991, which is the day the world's first website was published by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.[6][7]

Lyrics

If I love you, will you love me?
If I want you, will you want me?
I’m reaching, are you reaching out?

If I touch you, will you touch me now?

Through the wires to the heart
Phantom fingers fumble in the dark

I thought I did; I felt a spark

Are we all one beating heart?

If I love you, will you love me?
If I hurt you, will you hurt me?
I’m reaching, are you reaching out?

If I touch you, will you touch me now?

Through the wires to the heart
Phantom fingers fumble in the dark

I thought I did; I felt a spark

Are we all one beating heart?

Or are we strangers?
Am I a stranger?

Lyrics source[2]

Official versions

America Online

from Monsters

America Online (Instrumental)

from Monsters (The Instrumentals)

References

  1. ↑ "America Online | The Midnight". Bandcamp. July 10, 2020. Archived from the original on December 15, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "America Online | The Midnight". Bandcamp. May 3, 2019. Archived from the original on December 28, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  3. ↑ Zistler, Andrew (April 5, 2019). "The Midnight Talk Tour and Reveal New Single - America Online - NewRetroWave - Stay Retro! | Live The 80's Dream!". NewRetroWave. Archived from the original on April 6, 2022. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  4. ↑ Middleton, Ryan (July 10, 2020). "The Director's Cut: The Midnight - MONSTERS - Magnetic Magazine". Magnetic Magazine. Archived from the original on April 6, 2022. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  5. ↑ "We are The Midnight and we're playing Electric Forest for the first time. Ask us Anything! : ElectricForest". Reddit. May 21, 2019. Archived from the original on April 6, 2022. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  6. ↑ Nix, Elizabeth (August 4, 2016). "The World's First Web Site - HISTORY". HISTORY. Archived from the original on March 28, 2022. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  7. ↑ "info.cern.ch". CERN. August 6, 1991. Archived from the original on April 15, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
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