You may have noticed that I talk about Pro Wrestling a lot. In fact, my last Music to Write Realmgard to post was also about Wrestling…
This one isn’t necessarily about Wrestling, but the first place the ever heard Imagine Dragons‘ song Monster was in a video package in the lead-up to WrestleMania 30. In brief, at the time, Daniel Bryan (currently wrestling under his real name for All Elite Wrestling) was about to have to wrestle two matches in the same night for a chance to win the world title due to WWE’s corrupt authority figures (fittingly called the Authority) constantly interfering with Bryan because he wasn’t the sort of Wrestler they wanted representing their brand.
Essentially, it was a story of the lovable underdog overcoming the odds.
Incidentally, even watching Bryan win the title five years after the fact with full knowledge that he was going to win was still enough to make me tear up…
Monster was, in fact, written by Imagine Dragons as a tie-in for an iOS game — which, incidentally, no longer exists; it was removed from the App Store due to compatibility issues in 2018 and erased from people’s download histories due to the corporate spat between Apple and Epic.
Based on reading the synopsis of the game series as available on Wikipedia, I think the playable character in the games might actually be a monster who’s struggling not to give into his darker impulses, but having never played the games I cannot confirm that.
Not being aware of that at first, I read Monster as a pretty straightforward song about a person who’s not entirely content with his place in the world trying to improve himself and overcome the worst aspects of himself.
And, actually, it felt applicable to being autistic that I actually cried the first time I really listened to the lyrics:
“If I told you what I was
Would you turn your back on me?
And if I seem dangerous
Would you be scared?
I get the feeling just because
Everything I touch isn’t dark enough
That this problem lies in me.”Lyrics via Lyricfind.
Now, given that the song was written for a video game about a guy who might actually be a monster, I think I might be giving it too much credit, but that’s basically exactly how the principle of Applicability works…
And weather it’s about actual monsters or autistic people trying to explain what it feels like to be autistic, you can listen to here:
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