By Mitch Rice
A good song is an awful lot like a good game—both feature points of tension, harmony and release, and both rise and culminate in some kind of crescendo. Whether that crescendo is a bracing chorus or going all in on a game of cards is, of course, dependent on the context, but many great artists and bands have observed the parallels and drawn inspiration from the world of games to create some of our most iconic anthems.
Below are just a few of these memorable mash-ups; each is wildly different from the last, but all hew close to this core insight that music, like life, is often best thought of as a game.
Ariana Grande – “MONOPOLY”
The game everyone loves to hate, Monopoly has been frustrating families for decades with its ruthless emulation of market forces and real estate acquisition and its legendary game length.
In “MONOPOLY”, RnB songstress Ariana Grande teams up with Victoria Monét to use the game as the ideal theme on which to explore the meaning of personal ambition, achieving goals and ascribing meaningful value to one’s time and space: “Treat my goals like property / Collect them like Monopoly / I probably won’t come if there’s not a fee”.
This is rounded off with the double-entendre refrain of “being on a roll”, which speaks to enjoying a running spell of success in life, but also of rolling the physical die in the board game itself.
The Grateful Dead – “Deal”
Psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead were pioneers, and among the chief cultural architects of the Haight-Ashbury hippy scene of the late 60s. Their songs are rich with allusion, trickery, and more than a modicum of wisdom about life.
The song in question here, “Deal”, made its first official appearance on 1972’s Garcia – ostensibly Jerry Garcia’s first solo album. It tells the tale of a seasoned poker player who speaks about life, and his chosen game, and invites the listener to consider the parallels between the two.
Nowadays the likes of Texas Hold’em poker are more often than not enjoyed by tech-savvy gamers with equal fervor to the Dead Heads of old through reputable online platforms that preserve and build on this classic title’s thrills. And the refrain of the song holds equally true for them, that one should “watch each card you play, and play it slow”.
Arcade Fire – “Deep Blue”
These Canadian indie rock maestros are well known and loved for their far reaching lyrical themes, and “Deep Blue” from their third studio album, The Suburbs, is no exception. This song has many layers, and explores the nostalgia felt for a time before our lives were so overwhelmed with technology and gadgetry.
To build on this theme, the song takes its title from the name of a super-computer built by IBM in order to play chess better than a human. Deep Blue stunned the world when it faced off against chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov over two games held in 1996 and 97. In their first bout, Kasparov won a best of six match-up with the machine 4–2, and in their second game, Deep Blue emerged the victor 3½ –2½ .
The song rounds this event off with great sensitivity by exploring that, while Deep Blue may have bested Kasparov on the chess board, there’s more to life and the game of chess itself than numbers and calculations.
The Piranhas – “Space Invaders”
Released as a single in 1979, The Piranhas’ song “Space Invaders” is a playful exploration of the band’s disdain for touring, and wishing instead that they could take up residence forever inside the classic arcade game, Space Invaders – “I don’t really want to be / a rock and roll commodity / I wanna be space invaders”.
The tune further builds on this theme, taking on the perspective of a player of the game, “I dread going into the green / Those aliens are really mean”. All of this does a perfect job of highlighting the fact that games can serve as great Yՙ\țۈ݈Ț]H[Yڝ[ݜؙ
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