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From The Floppy Disk

America Online

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]

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"America Online"
"America Online"
Single by The Midnight
from the album Monsters
Released	May 13, 2019
Length	5:49
Label	Counter Records
Songwriter(s)	Tim McEwan; Tyler Lyle;
Producer(s)	Tim McEwan
Monsters track listing
	Monsters "1991 (intro)"; "America Online"; "Dance With Somebody"; "Seventeen"; "Dream Away"; "The Search for Ecco"; "Prom Night"; "Fire In The Sky"; "Monsters"; "Helvetica"; "Brooklyn"; "Deep Blue"; "Night Skies"; "City Dreams (interlude)"; "Last Train";
The Midnight singles chronology

15th July, 2024: Music - Days of Thunder was released 10 years ago on this day. Happy 10th anniversary to The Midnight!
18th June, 2024: Tour - A London show has been added to the Summer 2024 EU/UK Tour. The show will be at Electric Ballroom on July 22.
17th June, 2024: Tour - Three new shows have been added to the Chrome Nights North American Tour. The tour will visit Sacramento (September 9), Santa Cruz (September 12), and Portland, ME (October 5).
28th February, 2024: Music - Silence, a collaboration between The Midnight and Essenger, is released.
12th February, 2024: Tour - The Chrome Nights North American Tour is announced. The tour begins in September and will be co-headlined with Chromeo.
6th February, 2024: Tour - The Summer 2024 EU/UK Tour is announced. The tour will began on July 12 in Malmö and conclude on July 28 in Manchester.
3rd February, 2024: Tour - The Midnight announces on Instagram that Tim McEwan is stepping away from touring and will depart after the upcoming tours in India and Australia. He will continue to be The Midnight's producer.
30th January, 2024: Merch - An official graphic novel based on The Midnight universe has been announced. Titled The Midnight: Shadows, the graphic novel will be released by Dark Hose Comics on October 1, 2024.

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...that planning for The Midnight's graphic novel Shadows began in 2020, four years before its release?
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