I love art. Every single form of it. Even when I don’t fully understand the nuance and craft of certain disciplines, even as an uncultured spectator, I just love every venue that we have found, as a species, to express the complexities, highs and lows of our human experience.
So when I had to prepare to write my very first entry in this newspaper for the Culture Section, I didn’t know exactly what to write about. There were just so many possibilities, so many albums, movies, shows…
Then it landed on me, if I wrote about anything, it needed to be something I loved, and there’s few things I love more in art than music, and specifically, the song that I’m gonna talk about today, NEW MAGIC WAND.
One of the many features of this song is introducing a cinematographic genre to the music form, and this is the genre of horror.
Horror might be one of the narrative genres with the most potential to tell stories, through monsters, murders and blood, about what it is to be human, ironically enough. And that’s because horror explores vulnerability through our most basic fears of danger and death, and also because it taps into emotions and experiences that we often try to look away from. Jealousy, rage, violence, all parts of the human experience that are cast away in order to present nicer pictures of our reality. In horror, we are allowed to see the unseen, to explore the taboo and to see ourselves as the monsters we can become. NEW MAGIC WAND does a wonderful job at conveying everything I just said, and go maybe a little further.
And so our terrifying trip through Tyler’s terrifying masterpiece of jealousy and vulnerability starts with a couple of words that don’t even come from his mouth:
Sometimes you gotta close a door to open a window.
After this ominous intervention by comedian Jerrod Carmichael, the dense and violent baseline that is the dorsal spine of the song kicks in, along with some effects, screams and later the frantic rhythm that set the tense and violent tone of the song just enough to greet us with the first lines of the dark hymn.
I saw a photo you look joyous
My eyes are green I eat my veggies
I need to get her out the picture
She’s really fucking up my frame
She’s not developed like we are.
Through clever wordplay and metaphor of the picture developing process Tyler conveys the main conflict in the song and the album it takes part in: Tyler is infatuated with someone and pictures a future with them, the frame. But, there’s another person, probably an ex-lover, that threatens the future that Tyler is trying to build, fucking up.
But there’s more to it. On the line my eyes are green I eat my veggies, there’s two references that are also considerably important for the song. The first being Erykah Badu’s 2000s song “Green Eyes”, in which she sings.
My eyes are green
Cause I eat a lot of vegetables
It has nothing to do with your new friend.
This line, in and of itself, at the same time being a reference far back to Shakespeare’s Othello, in which jealousy is depicted by a green-eyed monster.
By using these two clever resources, Tyler conjures the image of him as a green-eyed monster, looking at old pictures of his lover full of jealousy and hatred. This is an early and clear example of the way the song portrays Tyler losing himself in the jealousy and envy he’s feeling towards the person he loves and the person that’s interfering through terrifying sounds and effects and monstrous references.
But there’s something lying on the first verse that’s far more ominous and terrifying than any monster: I need to get her out the picture.
Like magic, like magic, like magic, gone
New magic, new magic, new magic wand
Like magic, like magic, like magic, gone
New magic, new magic, new magic wand
After introducing us to his inner mindset and crisis over the situation, Tyler reminds us of the title of the song now as a mysterious and terrifying notice that he’s going to do something to get this interfering person out the picture, he’s going to make them gone as if it was magic, using his new magic wand.
Throughout the whole song this new magic wand and what Tyler is intending to do with it gets referenced several times, each time becoming more and more intense, and likening the new magic wand with a gun. But at this point in the song, we are left only with this weird sentence that, in the context and atmosphere that the song has built in less than a minute, takes an unnerving tone.
After the second verse mentioning more of the jealous nature of Tyler and his presumed presence on the spectrum (whether the neurotypical or sexual one), we get to what might be the most revealing and vulnerable moment in the song, when Tyler starts saying repeatedly, in a monotone voice:
Please don’t leave me now
Please don’t leave me now (Dying)
Please don’t leave me now
Please don’t leave me now (Dying).
Suddenly, the green-eyed monster of jealousy and envy is humanized by showing the deep rooted insecurities and needs for attention and love that are driving its terrifyingly homicidal impulses.
Tyler desperately asks once again for the person he is in love with to stay with him, to keep him company and choose him over the other impostor. The monotonality he uses to deliver these desperate and vulnerable lines can be read as the monster revealing his most sensible side, but still refusing to show any emotion, to protect his terrifying image, but most of all, to protect himself from the hurtful sensations and desperate situation that lies deep within the monster’s insides.
But we are reminded of the monster’s violent nature soon enough when the refrain (that we heard just seconds ago echoing the song’s title) comes back to join Tyler’s other refrain of wanting and needing the warmth that he’s perceiving being stolen by someone else. While we’re listening about the lonely monster and its new magic wand all at the same time we’re presented with the song’s central idea: an insecure, deeply hurt and needed individual, who desperately wants to hold on to someone who just might not want them back, and their determination to exterminate anything and anyone who he perceives stands in his way.
The rest of the song essentially just builds on top of this idea, with Tyler growing more intense and violent each time, but also more emotional and much more desperate, stating directly how he plans on killing the person that’s driving the person he loves out of his reach, finally exploding in the terrifyingly monotone bridge.
You roll the dice
You hit a seven, sure you right?
Beginners luck,
You’re not my first who gives a fuck
Your other one
Evaporates, we celebrate
You under oath
Now pick a side and if you don’t
(run, run, run, run)
I’ll pick you both
(run, run, run, run)
It’s not a joke
Murder she wrote.
In this bridge close to the ending of the song, we see the ultimate extreme of Tyler’s insecurities, jealousy, and murderous desire. In the first lines he expresses good luck and how the relationship seemed great at first by using the metaphor of “hitting a seven”, which in games of chance with dice can be the best result; but instantly contraposes it with the cynical and less fortunate reality that happened afterwards. In a desperate attempt to protect himself and his vulnerability he states that this is not his first relationship, and that he doesn’t care. He fantasizes with the person that he’s comparing himself to magically (or violently) evaporating and Tyler and his lover celebrating, only to once again get hit by the reality that his lover can’t decide yet who they want to be with, and how tired Tyler is of it.
Finally, he states that if his significant other can’t make the decision over whether he prefers, he will kill them both, a threat that becomes more terrifying with the voices saying run in the background and the singer stating in the same monotone serious tone that it’s not a joke.
This rambling that seems incoherent and erratic just lets us know how bad the situation has gotten for Tyler and his mental state, and how he is looking for every possible alternative, no matter how extreme, to feel safe again.
The song finishes with an even more erratic, more expressive and violent series of threats and cries for help and love between lines like it has nothin’ to do with that broad, but if it did, guaranteed she’d be gone, and I wanna share last names, I wanna be your number one. Finally ending with the desperate suggestion to his lover to commit a crime together and Tyler finally realizing the terrifying nature of everything he just said with the second to last lines in the song stating I admit you look concerned only to finish this barely 3 minutes magical mystery trip through jealousy, insecurities, need for love and murderous tendencies with the title, NEW MAGIC WAND, said one last time. And with this, Tyler the Creator’s terrifying magnum opus greets us goodbye.
That’s New Magic Wand, a terrifying dark masterpiece that speaks of how deep one can be hurt by insecurities and jealousy in a relationship, and how that hurt can then drive someone into doing horrible things, and… it really doesn’t go much further than that.
I wanted to end this article and essay with something positive. At the end of the day, I like to see the brighter side of things and what can be learnt but, in this song… the bright side is just not there. The song doesn’t ever rise to a healthy place, and the album it belongs to doesn’t either; IGOR is just as dark and desperate, and doesn’t have a single moment of healthy love or growth. Then I realized… maybe that was the point.
Art, whether we like it or not, can’t always be cathartic. Most pieces are, and that’s a good thing. But when it comes to its true essence, art is simply a reflection of the human experience, and as much as we might not like it, the human experience is not always great, and even if there’s growth in the future, there are moments where the only thing we are left with is the pain and the darkness of a situation, and art must exist for those moments too.
IGOR, and NEW MAGIC WAND, exist for those moments.
This is one of my favorite songs, ever. And it’s not only because of its genius wordplay or the complexity of its musical arrangements, not even because it’s such a unique song, but because it helped me get through one of the darkest emotional moments that I’ve ever experienced.
At a certain point in my life, I was in an unhealthy relationship as well, suffering for the unrequited love that I had towards someone who just couldn’t let their past go. I myself was in a desperate and sad fit of jealousy and neediness, and at that moment, what I needed really wasn’t a joyful song about how to get better, but to feel heard, to feel seen, and to know that I wasn’t the only one feeling like that – which is where NEW MAGIC WAND came to my rescue.
I’m way better now: I’ve found romantic and platonic relationships where my affection is corresponded to and even amplified, and I’ve healed and learned to love myself (most importantly, without needing to murder anybody). But the point of growth and happiness that I am in right now would have never been possible if I didn’t have NEW MAGIC WAND to be with me in those dark moments.
So, NEW MAGIC WAND and the album it belongs to doesn’t have a glorious moment of growth and learning, but doesn’t need to either. Even when love and healing are important and crucial parts of our life, so are jealousy and pain – one can never exist without the other. And just like in life, art doesn’t always have to be positive and happy; sometimes, we just need to see ourselves reflected in a green-eyed murderous monster to know that we are not alone, and after that, we can work and grow to not be that monster anymore.
Written by: Eduardo Méndez Alcántar
— Writer Eduardo can be reached at miraclegoodnight@hotmail.com
Edited by: Rie Aiyama
— Editor Rie can be reached at riai23@patana.ac.th
