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The Hymn of Acxiom 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 to.
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
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 to hide.
someone is gathering every crumb you drop, these
(mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot.
keep them all.
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 in time.
now we will build you an endlessly upward world,
(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth.
isn’t this what you want?
amen
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At the show on 10/2/13, Vienna stated that in Fall 2012 she was listening to religious works by a certain composer and also working an internship that used different databases to collect information for political polls. Around the same time, she also started playing around with a digital harmonizer and came up with the idea of a hymn from the point of view of these high-tech databases that gather information and use it to predict how people will respond/react to certain questions or issues.
I think this song is about socail media, datingsites, datamining and the big data we all post on all kinds of websites. I think this because Acxiom is the name of a very big online marketing company.
"The hymn" might be a reference to how all of us surrender our data to big corporations which have bevome like allknowing beings, that posses every part of our lives by now. It might also be a reference to recent scientific research showing that the brain centers involved with religon are also activated when we are thinking about certain devices (smartphones).
The endlessly upward world correspondes to facebook or twitter timelines, which are endlessly extending upwards. This is supported by the "(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth" line, which points to smartphones.
The last three lines point to the questions about whether or not using personal data is ethical and whether or not people want this to happen.
@vhk I\'m not sure about the endlessly upward world. What\'s endlessly going upward is the amount you spend to satisfy that newborn need. What\'s in your pocket? Your wallet, where your money, credit cards, and identification is, the target of a pickpocket. A con artist takes a mark for all he or she is worth, i.e. absconds with all the mark\'s money.
@vhk I\'m not sure about the endlessly upward world. What\'s endlessly going upward is the amount you spend to satisfy that newborn need. What\'s in your pocket? Your wallet, where your money, credit cards, and identification is, the target of a pickpocket. A con artist takes a mark for all he or she is worth, i.e. absconds with all the mark\'s money.
@jejones3141 That\'s also possible. The meaning is probably ambiguous in multiple ways.
@jejones3141 That\'s also possible. The meaning is probably ambiguous in multiple ways.
@jejones3141 That\'s also possible. The meaning is probably ambiguous in multiple ways.
@jejones3141 That\'s also possible. The meaning is probably ambiguous in multiple ways.
There's another concert that she describes the inspiration for the song. Paraphrasing here but she said she was living with this couple, and one of her roommates came in to tell her what they were working on. She said it was a database that has a fair bit of personal information for people in the list. For kicks, this roommate decided to look up her husband, and found him as well as a ton of data that she didn't think was public. She looked herself up, and same thing.
It was the reaction this roommate had. It was a mix of being a bit creeped out by seeing it, and a strange sense of excitement that data could be so powerful and so easily controlled. Almost like a "how awesome technology is".
Vienna said then that it seemed to turn into a love song as if it was written by a database.
She also said the roommate worked for a company called Acxiom