Imaginal Disk - Magdelena Bay

Released: August 23, 2024

Iv listened to a few songs off this album but I just found out it has to do with the idea of AI. She tells the story of “True” who has a CD inserted into her brain to turn her into “the ideal being” but she rejects it. Listening to the first song She Looked Like Me! I already get a sense that she's encountering an image that she wants to consume in, the “ideal” image - which is referred to as “Ghost”. The next song ties in where she's expressing an utter loneliness. "There's always killing time, but never time for me”, referring to her family and how they seem to neglect her.

True Blue Interlude feels like an intro video. Like Ms. Gracie in Poppy playtime, it's very cult-like, hypnotizing. The live performance I'm watching is very captivating, they have a very dreamlike set. They honestly should have played this album in The Substance (2024) or at least one song. Well, this song is basically an inition video. This was the ad she had seen that convinced her to eventually check out the installation center.  

Image is my favorite song on the album and after learning the intent of the album it’s so perfect. She's presented with her alternate reality, Ghost. The disc is inserted in and for a moment both her and Ghost experience a newfound sense of self -love as they count down  “22 more minutes”. This is the one they should have played in The Substance. It’s like the cherry on top after hearing the True Blue Interlude, why wouldn't you want to change and be the perfect image of yourself? If I watched an intention video and then heard that song right after id honestly be so sold, id be like: 

I was having trouble trying to correlate Death and Romance to the intent of this album but after reading a few other analyses I understand. This song is more her depicting a false relationship with an alien figure with the accomplishment of the imaginal disk. Contemplating the new perspectives she has gained with the disc. Fear, Sex plays along with this idea as the title derives from the words death and romance - fear being a cause of death and sex being a cause of romance - the words have been disguised. She starts realizing that her wounds that she was trying to erase will still very much be there even if transformed, her body accepts the disc regardless and she faces the fact that she's too late. 

Okay me and Joey are getting deep in this analysis right now. So this song, Watching T.V, basically is implying she's going to meet the actual monsters around her, kind of foreshadowing the outcome of the insertion of the disk. “If you wanna be clean you gotta scrub until the blood runs out, get the spots in between, slip your skin right off and hang it out”

Tunnel Vision she talks as if she's seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and wondering if she can make it out, actually out. Joey also mentioned how he likes how the disc is presented as the sun in her live performances, like it's everything in the world. This is also when the disc presumably starts working as the 22 minutes mentioned in Image have passed. So watching this music video for Feeling Diskinserted we see that the disc was corrupted which implies that her mind is being jumbled. And it even plays a disconnect where you see a transformation and even more foreshadowing in the lyrics “angel on a satellite”, she implies knowing the insertion of the disc was wrong and then all the sudden it comes to life. In the next song That's My Floor, in the music video we see her taking the discs out of her peers but quickly she realizes that taking it out leads to death, without it it she is merely just a ghost which is where I think the reference “ghost” comes from (the transformed version of herself). Cry For Me entails the dead version of herself, cry for me because I'm not here anymore. She realizes she never really needed the disc in the first place. She's been touring this album for a while. I wonder if it's because of the rise of AI. 

Now we get to Angel on a Satellite, which was referenced previously. This would be her reflection on what life was like before, it's nostalgic. Referencing that the life she made with her partner was what she wanted, not the idea that the disc had implied. At the end of this live performance she puts on angel wings showing she has entered an afterlife. 

Now we are entering the final song, The Ballad of Matt & Mica. This album is a lot more intricate than I originally thought. So a lot of people say her original self came out at the end of the album but what if it's not necessarily her true self but a ghost trying to impersonate that because that's the life she wants to be in and the life she always knew was right? There's many variations of this but that's how I interpret it.